Staff & Board

Executive Director
North America Team
Middle East Team
Current Interns
Board of Directors
Directors Emeritus

Encounter’s Executive Director

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  Yona Shem-Tov, Executive Director

  Yona joined the Encounter team as Executive Director in 2011.

  Before coming to Encounter, Yona pursued doctoral work at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow, where her research focused on citi­zen­ship and history educa­tion in Jewish and Muslim-American schools. She has worked and consulted for a broad range of American Jewish orga­ni­za­tions, including American Jewish World Service, Mayan, Matan, RAVSAK, and Abraham’s Vision, where she taught at both the AJ Heschel School and the Al-Iman School in Queens, NY.

  As a consul­tant to the Edmond & Benjamin Rothschild Foundation, Yona helped envi­sion and launch The Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship, a network of Jewish and Muslim social entre­pre­neurs in France, the UK and USA. She also co-created Re/Presenting the Jewish Past, a network of Jewish history educa­tors from across Canada and the USA, where she served as Associate Director.

  She is a noted public speaker, having presented on Israel and inter­cul­tural educa­tion before The Congress of Imams & Rabbis in Seville, the German Consul General and members of German Parliament in Berlin. As someone who grew up in a home of “rich cultural complexity where Hebrew, Arabic, Polish and English inter­min­gled and seam­lessly inter­twined” — her mother survived the Holocaust as a child in Europe and her father was born in Iraq — Yona brings to Encounter an excep­tional capacity to guide and inspire commu­ni­ties to extend them­selves across lines of difference.

  As Yona herself noted recently: “Encounter is the orga­ni­za­tional embod­i­ment of my most deeply held values. I am deeply honored to grow the impact of one of the most effec­tive forces for creating inclu­sive and compelling Israel engage­ment strate­gies for the North American Jewish commu­nity and for helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

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Encounter’s North America Team

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  Heidi Rosbe, Deputy Director

  Heidi holds a Master of International Affairs degree (2010), focused on Human Rights, Conflict Transformation and Gender Policy, from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). From 2005–2008, she served as the Associate Director of the Arab American Association of New York, a non-profit family services and cultural center for Arab immi­grants. Heidi has spent many years designing and facil­i­tating youth and adult programs in New York, Montreal, Michigan, Cyprus, Syria and the West Bank, aiming to create social change through inter­per­sonal dialogue, lead­er­ship, media and the arts. She has also worked inter­na­tion­ally on research projects including conflict assess­ments of Jordan and Sri Lanka, and for the Women’s Refugee Commission, devel­oping voca­tional training mate­rials for programs in Liberia. Heidi also volun­teers as a facil­i­tator for Project Common Bond and facil­i­ta­tion coach for Soliya. She speaks some Arabic, French, and Spanish.
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  Rakhel Shapiro, Development and Communications Associate

  Rakhel grad­u­ated with honors from Vassar College in 2011, with a BA in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. During her studies she focused on theory and prac­tice of inter­cul­tural and inter­per­sonal engage­ment, Israeli and Palestinian narra­tives and under­stand­ings, and American and European rela­tion­ships with the Middle East. Prior to her posi­tion as Development and Communications Associate with Encounter, Rakhel served in the same line of work as Development and Communications Intern with Encounter from Summer 2010 through Spring 2011 and Development Intern with Seeds of Peace in Spring 2012. Rakhel is profi­cient in Hebrew and speaks Modern Standard Arabic at the inter­me­diate level.
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  Daniel Silberbusch, Interim Director of Education & Outreach

  Daniel has recently returned to New York and rejoined the Encounter staff. For the last five years he served as Encounter’s Jerusalem-based Facilitation Director while also teaching at several Jerusalem insti­tu­tions: Yakar, Kivunim, the Conservative Yeshiva, Nesiya and Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. In 2005, Daniel was awarded a Dorot Fellowship. He subse­quently joined the Encounter staff in 2006. Prior to his arrival in Israel, Daniel served as Director of 9/11 Long-term Recovery and Victim Advocacy for New York Disaster Interfaith Services. He has been an affil­i­ated member of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains, having completed his chap­laincy resi­dency at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn and his Master of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary. Co-editor of Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrated Care in Disaster Relief Work, Daniel is presently writing a book about Israel and a book of short stories about New York.

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Encounter’s Middle East Team

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  Rebecca Polivy, Director-Middle East

  After completing a Master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from the School for International Training in VT, Rebecca moved to Jerusalem in 2006. Prior to joining the Encounter team, Rebecca served as the Program Associate at Search for Common Ground-Jerusalem. Currently, Rebecca also contributes to the devel­op­ment of the sport of Ultimate Frisbee in Israel and the West Bank by acting as the Intercultural Communications Consultant for Ultimate Peace, coaching youth teams and co-coordinating monthly Ultimate Frisbee tour­na­ments in Tel Aviv.

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  Amy Pearlman, Program Coordinator

  After grad­u­ating magna cum laude from Cornell University in 2009, Amy spent the past year at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Learning in Jerusalem. At Cornell, Amy served as Hillel President, founded a Jewish-Muslim dialogue, founded a Hillel-Black Student Union Katrina Initiative, and was awarded the 2009 Harrop and Ruth Freeman Prize in Peace Studies.

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  Jessica Kate Meyer, Advanced Leadership Coordinator

  In the summer of 2012, Jessica completed her fourth year of rabbinical school at Hebrew College in Boston as a Wexner fellow. After grad­u­ating from Wellesley College with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies, Jessica moved to Tel Aviv to intern with the League for the Arabs of Jaffa and with the Palestinian Israeli/Jewish Israeli theater company Peace Child. She pursued grad­uate theater training in London, and appeared in many film, theater, and tele­vi­sion projects in Europe and the United States, most notably in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. While living in Boston as a rabbinical student, she devel­oped family educa­tion programs, and served as a Jewish music specialist for area syna­gogues. She continues to perform as a story­teller and singer.

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  Jenn Gold, Middle East Operations and Program Officer

  Jenn holds an MA in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from the Hebrew University and a BS in Kinesiology with a focus on Athletic Training from California State University. Prior to coming to Jerusalem in 2010, Jenn served as the Volunteer Program Supervisor at the Long Beach Rescue Mission for four years. As an intern with Encounter, Jenn devel­oped Encounter’s Middle East volun­teer and intern­ship program. She is now delighted to be part of the Encounter staff as Middle East Operations and Program Officer.

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Encounter’s Current Interns and Volunteers

• Jen Brown, Administrative and Programming Intern

  Jen Brown is from Brooklyn, New York, and is a recent grad­uate of Grinnell College, where she majored in Chinese. Jen has done exten­sive research and written a thesis on Jewish Diaspora commu­ni­ties in China and on the Kaifeng Jewish commu­nity in China. Her research largely concerned how Jewish Diaspora commu­ni­ties main­tain their ethnic bound­aries and commu­nity cohe­sion. Jen became acquainted with Encounter when she met Rabbi Melissa Weintraub at the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize award week and was so inspired she applied to intern at Encounter. Outside of Encounter, Jen teaches English to adult language learners in Brooklyn. Jen is fluent in Chinese and profi­cient in Arabic, Danish and Hebrew.

• Steve Cucharo, Development and Communications Intern

  Steve Cucharo is currently a grad­uate student at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, completing his MS in Global Affairs with a focus on peace­building. While completing his BA in Political Science at Fordham University, he became inter­ested in peace theory, civil wars, as well as the devel­op­ment of mass move­ments as a tool for social change. As a result of studies, personal interest and his partic­i­pa­tion in Project Common Bond, an annual peace­building sympo­sium which brings together inter­na­tional victims of terrorism, he began to focus his studies on the polit­ical dimen­sions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He became inspired to join the Encounter team after learning about the organization’s commit­ment to peace­building on a person-to-person level, and the dedi­ca­tion of its staff to the devel­op­ment of concrete peace­building initia­tives on the ground. Steve speaks German as a result of under­grad­uate course­work and his studies in Berlin, Germany. He also speaks Spanish at the inter­me­diate level.

• Christopher Jenkins, Senior Program and Administrative Assistant (Intern)

  In 2011, Chris grad­u­ated from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia with a Masters of International Affairs, focusing on the study of human rights and conflict reso­lu­tion, partic­u­larly in rela­tion to the conflict in Afghanistan and mili­tary action in Pakistan’s FATA/NWFP. A profes­sional musi­cian, he has trav­eled to perform in Pakistan with the NGO Cultures in Harmony, and taught music students in China and South Africa. In conjunc­tion with Columbia University Professor of Psychology Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, he recently co-authored a book chapter focusing on the inter­sec­tion of multi­cul­tur­alism and poli­tics in the United States and abroad.

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Board of Directors

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  Shana Tabak, Chair

  Shana Tabak is a Practitioner-in-Residence with the International Human Rights Law Clinic, where she teaches human rights law and super­vises students in human rights liti­ga­tion at inter­na­tional and domestic judi­cial bodies. Previously she taught at George Washington Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, and served as a law clerk at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands. She grad­u­ated from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a Public Interest Law Scholar and was awarded the Bettina Pruckmayr Award for excel­lence in International Human Rights. While a law student, Shana worked with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Tahirih Justice Center, the Iraq office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the law firm Foley Hoag. Prior to receiving her degree in law, Shana worked in human rights for several years with orga­ni­za­tions including: the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York, and Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement in Israel. She was a Fulbright scholar in Bolivia in 2002 and a Dorot fellow in Israel in 2004. Her acad­emic and profes­sional inter­ests include inter­na­tional human rights, tran­si­tional justice and immi­gra­tion and refugee rights. She served as the volun­teer director to Encounter in 2005–2006 in Jerusalem, and is one of the organization’s founding Board members.

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  Iris Feinberg

  Iris has been active in Atlanta’s Jewish commu­nity for the last 20 years. She has held many different campaign and plan­ning posi­tions within the Jewish commu­nity including Atlanta Federation Annual Campaign Chair 2008 and Chair of the Endowment Board for 2005–2007. Her national involve­ment includes Co-Chair of National Young Leadership for United Jewish Communities 2003–2004 and National Training Chair for the 2005–2006 UJC National Campaigns. Her inter­na­tional involve­ment includes being a member of the Board of Governors for the Jewish Agency for Israel as well as co-chairing their Partnerships Committee and chairing their NextGen committee. In addi­tion to her Federation work, she has been actively involved in her children’s schools, The Epstein School and The Paideia School. She is the recip­ient of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta Abe Schwartz Young Leadership Award and Gerald H. Cohen Community Award and was awarded the Israel Bonds’ Star of David Community Award. She has been an active volun­teer with The Posse Foundation, Junior Achievement, and JDub Records.Feinberg was the owner and President of The Trillium Group, Ltd., a medical claims processing company head­quar­tered in Decatur, and owner of Chew on This, LLC, a company that special­izes in invest­ment in small, women-owned busi­nesses. In addi­tion, she is the co-owner of a cook­book publishing company. A grad­uate of The Wharton School and Temple University, she is a recog­nized expert in both tele­working and health care admin­is­tra­tion. Iris is completed her MA in Applied Linguistics with a focus on Health Literacy. Iris and her husband, Bruce live in Atlanta and have four chil­dren — Jonathon, Michael, Rachel and Daniel.

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  Steven M. Jacobson

  Raised in a Chicago suburb, Steven M. Jacobson holds degrees from the University of Kansas and Brandeis University and was a Fellow of the Melton Center for Diaspora Jewish Education at Hebrew University where he had the priv­i­lege of being in the last class of renowned Torah educator Nechama Leibowitz, just prior to her death.

  Steve has been Director of the University of Kansas Hillel Foundation, Project Director for a curric­ular initia­tive of the Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service at Brandeis University and has been at the Dorot Foundation since 1999, where he is Vice President for Strategy and Director of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel. Additionally, Steve has been a consul­tant to a variety of Jewish orga­ni­za­tions and nascent-stage Jewish initia­tives and frequently teaches about the American Jewish insti­tu­tional infrastructure.

  Steve lives in Providence with his wife and two daughters.

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  Rabbi Marion Lev-Cohen

  As Rabbi for Communal Engagement at Central Synagogue, Rabbi Lev-Cohen teaches classes in Jewish learning for adults, leads pastoral groups, as well as affinity groups. Her work aims at building and deep­ening networks of friend­ships and commu­nity within the congre­ga­tion. This past year, together with Rabbi Rachel Cowan, Rabbi Lev-Cohen started a pilot group at Central Synagogue called “Wise Aging.”

  Over the past decade, Rabbi Lev-Cohen served on numerous boards and chaired commit­tees, including UJA/Federation, the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and American Jewish World Service. She currently serves on the boards of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality, and the Israel Policy Forum.

  A psychother­a­pist by profes­sion, Rabbi Lev-Cohen ran the grad­uate training program for social work students at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and was an instructor at the B.U. School of Social Work. She is a grad­uate of the Wexner Heritage Foundation program. A mother of two, she resides with her husband Steven M. Cohen in New York and Jerusalem.

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  Rabbi Miriam Margles, Co-Founder

  Miriam is an artist, educator and activist, currently living and working in Toronto’s Jewish commu­nity. Integrating Jewish learning, commu­nity building, and creative explo­ration through music, move­ment, and writing, Miriam facil­i­tates work­shops with various popu­la­tions, including commu­ni­ties in conflict, women in prison, Israeli agunot (Jewish women denied a divorce by their husbands) and the next gener­a­tion. A grad­uate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Miriam previ­ously served as the Associate Rabbi at Kehillat Lev Shalem in Woodstock, New York. A composer of orig­inal litur­gical music as well as a published poet, Miriam has worked with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, TOVA Artistic Projects for Social Change, and The Nesiya Institute. Miriam is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Jerusalem Fellows at the Mandel Leadership Institute. She holds a Master’s degree in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from York University.
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  Daniel Septimus

  Daniel is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of MyJewishLearning, Inc., a not-for-profit web publisher that educates and engages hundreds of thou­sands of people each month. Daniel is the founder of Kveller​.com, MJL’s parenting website, and was a founding editor of MyJewishLearning​.com. He was, for several years, the Books colum­nist for the Jerusalem Post, and the host of the 92nd Street Y’s “Jewish Literary Exchange,” a series of open inter­views with promi­nent authors. Daniel has written and lectured widely on Judaism and contem­po­rary issues, partic­u­larly the inter­sec­tion of tech­nology and Jewish life. He is a member of the Steering Committee of Altshul, an inde­pen­dent minyan in Brooklyn. Daniel has studied at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Manchester, and Yeshivat Har Etzion.

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Directors Emeritus

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  Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Co-Founder, former Co-Executive Director

  Melissa co-founded Encounter in 2005 and served as Co-Executive Director until 2011. Melissa was ordained as a Conservative Rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary and has repre­sented the Seminary as a Rabbinic Fellow in Conservative commu­ni­ties throughout North America. She builds on twelve years of expe­ri­ence in Middle East people-to-people efforts, and is the author of several arti­cles treating the subjects of war ethics in Jewish sources. A noted speaker and Jewish educator, Melissa has taught in pres­ti­gious venues on four conti­nents. An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, she grad­u­ated from Harvard University with a summa cum laude degree in Political Theory. Her recent publi­ca­tions include: “Warriors, Prophets, Peacemakers, and Disciples: A Call to Action in the Face of Religious-Inspired Violence,” (in Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice) and “Torture and Torah: Human Dignity and Self-Defense in Jewish Law” (in Torture Is a Moral Issue: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and People of Conscience Speak Out). A recip­ient of a Samuel Ruben Foundation grant, Melissa is currently working on a book exploring Jewish reli­gious responses to terror.
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  Ilana Sumka, former Co-Executive Director

  Prior to her five year tenure at Encounter as Co-Executive Director, Ilana worked as a Technical Assistance Officer at the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). During that time, Ilana managed a program of Jewish profes­sional volun­teers providing capacity building assis­tance to NGOs in Africa and Asia. A consul­tant to non-profits and former director of numerous elec­toral and legisla­tive campaigns, Ilana has also served as a nonpar­tisan inter­na­tional elec­tion monitor in Bosnia and Albania under the auspices of OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In addi­tion, Ilana worked for a number of years at the grass­roots level in commu­nity polit­ical and labor orga­nizing, winning numerous legisla­tive and elec­toral campaigns in the US. An honors grad­uate of Wesleyan University and a recip­ient of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, Ilana lived in Nairobi, Kenya for four years where she founded and led a commu­nity service orga­ni­za­tion teaching in a local middle school.