Festival Presenters
More presenters being added daily!
Michael Solomonov is the Executive Chef/Co-Owner at Zahav, the 2019 James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Restaurant, a modern Israeli restaurant that brings the authentic flavors of Israel’s culture to Philadelphia. He is known for his extraordinary skill at transforming simple foods into artful culinary masterpieces and is widely regarded as one of the country's top chefs and entrepreneurs. In addition to his duties at Zahav, Chef Solomonov is a partner in Federal Donuts, Dizengoff, Goldie, and Abe Fisher.
Joan Nathan is the author of eleven cookbooks including her latest work, “King Solomon’s Table: a Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World,” released by Alfred P. Knopf in April 2017. Her previous cookbook, “Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France” (Knopf), was named one of the 10 best cookbooks of 2010 by NPR, Food and Wine, and Bon Appétit magazines. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Tablet Magazine.
Michael Twitty is an African-American Jewish writer, culinary historian and educator. He became interested in Judaism as a child and formally converted at age 25. He is the author of The Cooking Gene, published by HarperCollins/Amistad, which won the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Book of the Year as well as the category for writing. In addition to experience as a Hebrew school teacher, he teaches “Afro-Sephashkenazi” cuisine and leads a master class on kosher soul food. His latest book, Kosher Soul, is due out later this year.
Gail Simmons is a trained culinary expert, food writer, and dynamic TV personality. Since the show’s inception in 2006, she has been permanent judge on BRAVO’s Emmy-winning series Top Chef. Now in its 17th successful season, Top Chef is rated the #1 food show on cable television. Gail also hosts Iron Chef Canada, the #1 show on Food Network Canada. She makes regular appearances at the nation’s foremost culinary festivals. She is an active board member and supporter of City Harvest, Hot Bread Kitchen, Common Threads, Cycle Kids, and the Institute of Culinary Education.
Adeena Sussman is a cookbook author, food writer, recipe and product developer and consultant based in Tel Aviv. When I'm not roaming the Carmel Market steps from my apartment, you can find me in my kitchen whipping up new recipes and writing projects. My Israeli cookbook, Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen, will be released by Penguin/Avery books on September 3, 2019. My three most recent collaborations, Cravings and Cravings: Hungry for More with Chrissy Teigen and The Sprinkles Baking Book with Candace Nelson, were New York Times best sellers. Along with co-authoring eleven cookbooks and writing Short Stack Editions' Tahini, I've written about Israeli cooking, food, and culture for Food & Wine, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Epicurious, Gourmet (may she rest in peace) and many others.
Einat Admony, also known as the ultimate balaboosta, (meaning "perfect housewife" in Yiddish) is the chef and owner of Balaboosta, the fine-dining Middle Eastern restaurant; Kish-Kash, New York’s first couscous bar; and the beloved falafel chain, Taim. She is also the author of two cookbooks: Balaboosta and Shuk, with Artisan Books. Einat, named a "fiercely determined chef" by The New York Times, grew up in Tel Aviv, worked as a cook in the Israeli Army, walked away from college after two months, roamed around Germany as a gypsy, then packed up her life to move to New York City. Now, after 20+ years in New York, Einat persists in her work and expansion with her new ventures, including Kish-Kash. Hand rolled couscous, deemed "fine as sand" by Eater, is served fresh there every day and is a perfect example of how Einat continues to innovate and push the food scene.
Lior Lev Sercarz is the chef, spice blender and owner of La Boîte, a biscuits and spice shop in NY. While at the acclaimed Institut Paul Bocuse he did an externship with Michelin-starred chef Olivier Roellinger in Cancale, France. Roellinger became known for his rare understanding of spices, blends, oils, and pastes, areas Lior found the most interesting. In 2011, he opened La Boîte Biscuits & Spices and now collaborates with chefs from around the world. Lior has written three cookbooks including The Art of Blending (2012), The Spice Companion, and Mastering Spice: Recipes and Techniques to Transform Your Everyday Cooking. He also serves as the culinary director of the Jewish National Fund-USA Institute of Culinary Arts in Israel’s Upper Eastern Galilee, set to open in 2021.
Ruth Reichl was the restaurant critic and food editor of the Los Angeles Times and then The New York Times before moving to Gourmet Magazine, where she was Editor in Chief for ten years. She has authored five memoirs, Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, Garlic and Sapphires, For You, Mom, Finally and Save Me the Plums, which was published in April. Her novel, Delicious! was published in 2014, and her cookbook, My Kitchen Year, 136 Recipes that Saved My Life in 2015. She is the recipient of six James Beard Awards.
Grace Ramirez has lived all around the world, cooks exquisite Latin cuisine, and also empowers children, women and minorities to find their personal power and passion through educating them about every aspect of food. She embraces the process from growing, harvesting, hunting and gathering to using these resources to create mouthwatering creations in the kitchen. Grace has worked with the Food Network, including Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and appeared on Masterchef USA. After working around the world, she has returned to New York and is collaborates with The Horticultural Society of New York to teach children about the power of food. Most recently, she’s been leading the COVID-19 operations for World Central Kitchen in New York to safely distribute individually packaged, fresh meals in communities that need support.
photo credit Carly Diaz
BONNIE MORALES is the first-generation American daughter of Belarusian immigrants. She grew up in Chicago in a large family that brought with them the distinctive culture of food and drink of the former Soviet Union. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America, then honed her skills in several of New York and Chicago’s Michelin starred restaurants. In 2014, she and her husband Israel Morales opened Kachka, their dream restaurant devoted to the food that Bonnie grew up with, inspired by Russia and former Soviet republics. They’ve since opened two more Russian eateries: Kachinka, and Kachka Lavka. Morales was named a Rising Star chef by StarChefs, nominated for Food & Wine's The People's Best New Chef, and was a finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest. Her first cookbook, Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking, written with Deena Prichep, was released in 2017 to critical acclaim.
Assaf Granit is an Israeli chef, restaurateur, and television personality. He is the co-owner of numerous award winning restaurants including Machneyuda in Jerusalem, Palomar, Barbary and Coal Office in London and Shabour and Balagan in Paris and Co Founder of The ACT innovation hub, connecting Culinary & FoodTech. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Chef Granit sees this city as his inspiration. This unique DNA is what goes on to lead Chef Granit's food and restaurants around the world.
Jake Cohen is a food writer, recipe developer and nice Jewish boy from NYC. After working at Daniel and ABC Kitchen, he transitioned into media, working in the test kitchen of Saveur Magazine before spending time as the Food Editor of Tasting Table and Restaurant Critic of Time Out New York. He currently serves as the Editorial and Test Kitchen Director of Feedfeed. His first cookbook, JEW-ISH, comes out Spring 2021. Come Friday night, you can find Jake cooking lavish Shabbat dinners through OneTable, of which he is a board member. When he isn't cooking, he's constantly eating and posting about it on his Instagram, @jakecohen.
photo credit Chris Farber
David Sax is a writer and reporter who specializes in business and culture. His latest book, THE SOUL OF AN ENTREPRENEUR: Work and Life Beyond the Startup Myth (April 21, 2020), delivers a look at what entrepreneurship in America really looks like today. His previous book, The Revenge of Analog, was a #1 Washington Post bestseller, was selected as one of Michiko Kakutani's top ten books of 2016 for the New York Times, and has been translated into six languages. He also won a James Beard award for his first book, Save the Deli. He lives in Toronto.
photo credit Nomi Ellenson
Jeffrey Yoskowitz is a food entrepreneur and a thought leader in the Jewish food world. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods and co-owner of The Gefilteria, a food venture that’s been reimagining Old World Jewish Foods since 2012. Jeffrey has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, among others. Jeffrey teaches Jewish culinary anthropology at The City College of New York. He is the Co-Executive Producer of the Festival focused on program. Follow him on instagram @jeffyosko and @gefilteria.
photo credit Nomi Ellenson
LIZ ALPERN is co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods and co-owner of The Gefilteria, a food venture that’s been reimagining Old World Jewish Foods since 2012. She is also the creator of Queer Soup Night, a global event series highlighting the talent of queer chefs and raising funds for locally-based social justice organizations. Liz is a member of the programming team.
photo credit Sophie Barbasch
Leah Koenig is the author of six cookbooks including The Jewish Cookbook (Phaidon, 2019), a 400+ collection of global Jewish dishes, and Modern Jewish Cooking (Chronicle Books, 2015). Her writing and recipes have also appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Epicurious, TASTE, Food52, Departures, and Tablet magazine, among other publications. Leah leads cooking demonstrations and workshops around the country and world. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism and the Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the literature, law, and social history of the rabbinic movement in general and, in particular, on rabbinic food regulations. He is the author of Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press); The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World (Cambridge University Press); and Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge University Press), as well as the co-editor of Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food (New York University Press); and Religious Competition in the Third Century C.E.: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht). Currently, he is working on a co-edited volume, tentatively entitled Animals and the Law in Antiquity, and beginning research on a new book, provisionally entitled Jews and The Pig: A History, which will explore the long association between Jews and the pig.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); and They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt). She has contributed entries on Jewish cookbooks and Jewish food to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Encyclopedia Judaica, and Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, and articles to Gastronomica. She received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She currently serves on Advisory Boards for Jewish museums in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow, and advises on museum projects in Lithuania and Albania.
Darra Goldstein is the Founding Editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, named the 2012 Publication of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, and the lead scholar for YIVO’s online course “A Seat at the Table: A Journey into Jewish Food.” She is the author of six award-winning cookbooks, including The Georgian Feast (the 1994 IACP Julia Child Cookbook of the Year) and the recently published Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, a New York Times best cookbook for Spring 2020. Darra serves as Series Editor of California Studies in Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has been honored as Distinguished Fellow in Food Studies at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, and as a Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She sits on the board of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and is a member of the advisory “Kitchen Cabinet” of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Hélène Jawhara Piñer is a PhD in Medieval History and the History of Food. She has been awarded by the Broome & Allen Fellowship from the American Sephardi Federation in 2018, dedicated to recognizing impressive academic accomplishments and service on behalf of the Sephardic community, as well as encouraging continued excellence in the field of Sephardi Studies. As a member of the Research Center CESR (UMR7323 of the CNRS) and of the CoReMa program research, her research interests are the medieval culinary history of Spain through inter and multiculturalism with a special focus on the Jewish culinary heritage written in Arabic.
Photo credit Sasha Israel/Courtesy of Russ & Daughters
Niki Russ Federman was pretty much born in a herring barrel, with a sharp knife in her hand and a penchant for caviar, bagels and lox. Niki is the Fourth Generation owner of Russ & Daughters, her family’s 106 year old iconic New York Jewish food business. Along with her cousin Josh Russ Tupper, Niki owns and operates Russ & Daughters’ landmark Lower East Side appetizing store: the home of bagels & lox since 1914. Together the cousins have built and opened two restaurants — Russ & Daughters Cafe and Russ & Daughters at the Jewish Museum — and most recently, Russ & Daughters Brooklyn, which houses their Jewish bakery and nationwide shipping center. She is fluent in several languages, but alas, Yiddish is not one of them.
Shannon Sarna is Editor of The Nosher, a contributing writer to Kveller.com and co-host of the podcast, Call Your Mother, all part of 70 Faces Media. She is also author of Modern Jewish Baker: Challah, Babka, Bagels and More. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, three children, two rescue dogs and a bunny named S’mores.
Alana Newhouse is the editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine, which she founded in 2009. She is also the author of "The 100 Most Jewish Foods: A Highly Debatable List" (Artisan, 2019).
Rachel Lithgow is the Vice President of The Museum of the Jewish People, Beit Hatfutsot and the Museum’s chief representative outside of the State of Israel. She has had a long career in Jewish Museums and archives including the History department of the Shoah Foundation, CEO of the LA Museum of the Holocaust and CEO of the American Jewish Historical Society. She lives in New York.
Ziggy Gruber is a deli man, like his father and grandfather before him. He first donned an apron at age eight to help in the family deli, then studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London, and trained in London’s only three-star Michelin restaurants, Le Gavroche and The Water Side Inn. In the early 1990s, Gruber opened Ziggy G’s on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles where he remained until he moved to Texas to open Kenny & Ziggy’s in 1999, which was recognized as one of the country’s most authentic, remaining Jewish-American delis in David Sax’s book “Save the Deli”. Almost every day, seven days and nights a week, Ziggy Gruber is in place, in the deli and making people smile (either from his jokes, his food or both).
photo credit Noah Fecks
Gabriella Gershenson is a James Beard Award-nominated food journalist based in New York City. She has been an editor at Saveur Magazine, Rachael Ray Every Day, and Time Out New York, and is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. Her work has been published In The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Tablet, Food & Wine Magazine and many other publications. She is an editor of the recently published books The 100 Most Jewish Foods (Artisan) and Hummus (Magica), and moderates a series of food talks at Symphony Space and Temple Emanuel's Streicker Center. She has been featured on the Food Network's 24 Hour Restaurant Battle, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, and has made multiple appearances on TV and radio. She is a food writing instructor at NYU Steinhardt’s graduate program in Food Studies.
Photo credit Stephanie Kaltsas
Boris Fishman is the author of the novels A REPLACEMENT LIFE (which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal), and DON'T LET MY BABY DO RODEO, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and SAVAGE FEAST, a family memoir told through recipes. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian,The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, Vogue, and many other publications. He has taught at Princeton University, and now lives with his family in Missoula, Montana, where he teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the University of Montana.
Sonya Sanford is the owner and executive chef of Beetroot Market & Deli.Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Sonya is the child of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In her early twenties, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as a personal chef and caterer in Hollywood, and later as a food stylist, culinary producer, and food writer. As a chef, Sonya specializes in Jewish food from around the world, and is passionate about exploring the evolution, influences and ingredients of cuisine in the Jewish diaspora.With Beetroot Market & Deli is Sonya is creating a place in Portland for modern Jewish foods that are healthy, comforting, delicious and sustainable.
Michael Shemtov is a Charleston, South Carolina based restaurateur with a strong passion for entrepreneurship, and a strong interest in politics. He has opened Butcher & Bee Charleston, The Daily, Butcher & Bee in East Nashville, and now co-owns Redheaded Stranger in East Nashville. His project Workshop - a multi-concept culinary incubator has “graduated” over six culinary entrepreneurs out of it’s food hall and into standalone brick & mortar locations. He is passionate about politics, current events and world affairs.
Rabbi Abigail Treu serves as the Director of the Center for Jewish Living and the David H. Sonabend Center for Israel at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. Rabbi Treu comes to the JCC from the National Ramah Commission, where she served as director of strategic advancement and Reshet Ramah. She previously served as a Rabbinic Fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Abby has served on the board of Big Tent Judaism and on the Women’s Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly. She is an alumna of the Clergy Training Program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. In 2005 she co-authored, with Dov Peretz Elkins, The Bible’s Top 50 Ideas, and she has written a number of articles and op-eds. An avid knitter and yoga enthusiast, she lives in Manhattan with her husband and three children.
Eshchar Ben Shitrit is founder & CEO at Redefine meat. Eshchar is a technology strategist, by day, and foodie/aspiring chef by night. After spending time as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of Israel, Eshchar turned to High-Tech. As product manager at HP Indigo and VP Marketing at Highcon System, Eshchar led the development and launch of digital products in traditional industries, resulting in accelerated innovation and hundreds of millions in new business. Early in 2018 he started pursuing his dream – creating advanced technologies to solve a major problem in the food supply chain, and transform the way meat is produced. He founded a company with the mission to use technology to make meat, instead of animals. Redefine Meat is leading a technological revolution in the food industry by creating craveable animal-free meat using proprietary industrial 3D printers.
RACHEL B. GROSS is Assistant Professor and John and Marcia Goldman Chair in American Jewish Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. She is a religious studies scholar whose work focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American Jews, including Jewish food history. She is the author of Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice (New York University Press, 2021), which includes a study of artisanal delis.
Evan Bloom is co-founder of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen with locations in The Bay Area and Tokyo, Japan. An accomplished chef and entrepreneur, Evan is widely regarded as one of the leaders of the modern Jewish deli revival. His first cookbook, Eat Something, was published this March.
Julia Turshen is the bestselling author of Now & Again, Feed the Resistance, and Small Victories. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and Saveur. She is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women/non-binary individuals in food, and the host of Keep Calm and Cook On, a podcast. Julia lives in the Hudson Valley with her wife and pets.
Aaron Goldfarb is the hottest name in all things booze, as a writer and journalist of drinking culture--writing for major publications such as Esquire, Food & Wine, VinePair, PUNCH, and others. He was recently written up in The New York Times in an article that featured his new cocktail book, Gather Around Cocktails, which lists forty-five recipes to make for holidays throughout the year, including ones for Hanukkah, Purim, and even a kosher-for-Passover cocktail you could serve at your seder.
Tsipi Shoham is founder & CEO at GreenOnyx, a food tech startup that’s about to deliver a new category of greens that complements today's traditional offerings. GreenOnyx ”green caviar” like super-greens are cultivated in sophisticated fully automated seed-to-pack urban grow units. Tsipi has more than 20 years of medical research and multidisciplinary product R&D. She led breakthrough developments as CTO, with granted patents. Tsipi has a PhD from Weizmann Institution, and a Post Doctorate from Stanford, CA
Amy Meltzer works as the Professional Learning Lead for PJ Library. She was a long time kindergarten teacher at Lander-Grinspoon Academy, and the Director of Young Family Engagement at Abundance Farm. Amy is the author of three children's books, A Mezuzah on the Door , The Shabbat Princess, and Harvest Blessings, and the Jewish parenting blog Homeshuling. She is a former wilderness guide, Nature's Classroom instructor, and the founding director of Teva. Amy is the 2015 recipient of the Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education. She lives in Northampton with her husband, her 2 daughters, and her golden retriever.
Naama Shefi– Founder and Executive Director, Jewish Food Society. With over a decade of entrepreneurial experience promoting Jewish and Israeli food programs, Naama is a leading expert in the field, with deep connections to top culinary personalities, publications, and cultural organizations. After moving to New York City in 2005, she became the Director of Public Programs at the Israeli Consulate, where she started a new culinary department. In 2013, she launched the hit pop-up restaurant, The Kubbeh Project, which for three weeks drew thousands of diners to a small bakery in the East Village to sample a taste of Jewish-Iraqi comfort food. In 2017, she founded the Jewish Food Society, a non-profit organization that works to preserve, celebrate and revitalize Jewish culinary heritage through an online digital recipe archive of global family recipes and dynamic public programming.
Arielle Nir Mamiye – Culinary Director, Jewish Food Society. Prior to joining Jewish Food Society, Arielle worked as a project manager at The MP Shift, a hospitality design studio, and most recently as the branding and marketing manager for chef Ignacio Mattos at his restaurant group, Matter House. She is a graduate of the International Culinary Center's Professional Culinary Arts Program. Arielle lovingly brings her family's diverse Jewish background of Moroccan, Persian and Israeli roots as well as her passion and knowledge of Jewish food to her role at Jewish Food Society.
Claudia Roden was born and brought up in Cairo. She went to school in Paris for three years and to art school in London, where she now lives. Her The Book of Jewish Food (Knopf) won six international awards including the James Beard Best Cookbook of the Year in 1997. Words from historian Simon Schama: “Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is, rather, memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet, who just happens to communicate through ta’am – taste. The Book of Jewish food is her masterpiece and, though the recipes are glorious, the richest and most sensuous encyclopedia of Jewish life ever set in print … No one will ever produce a richer or more satisfying feast of the Jewish experience.”
Alan Silberberg is an author and cartoonist. His middle-grade novel, MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE won the SCBWI Sid Fleischman Humor Award. He is the author/illustrator of the picture book MEET THE LATKES and next year’s sequel, MEET THE MATZAH.
Rella Kaplowitz is the Senior Program Officer for Evaluation and Learning at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, where she makes sure the Foundation has the right information to strengthen its work. On any given day, you might find Rella wrangling data in Tableau, facilitating brainstorming sessions, helping a grantee design an alumni survey, or turning data into compelling stories. Or leaving cookies in the kitchen.
Jeff and Jodie Morgan are winemakers and cookbook authors. They leave a trail of fine wine and fabulous recipes in their wake. They broke with tradition in 2005 when they released Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, the first kosher wine to compare favorably with top Napa Cabernets and now regularly found on 3-star Michelin restaurant wine lists worldwide. Today, their urban winery is located in Berkeley, CA. The couple also makes wine at Covenant Israel winery in the Galilee. Jeff and Jodie have co-authored 10 books, including Dean & Deluca Food and Wine; The Working Parents Cookbook; Rosé, A Guide to the World’s Most Versatile Wine; and The Covenant Kitchen, Food and Wine for the New Jewish Table. Jeff was also West Coast editor for Wine Spectator (1992 – 1999) and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Elle and Food & Wine. He and Jodie divide their time between California and Israel.
Dan Raskin is the 4th generation owner operator at Manny's Cafeteria and Delicatessen in Chicago.After graduating from Bradley University Dan joined the family business and quickly made updates to keep up with the fast changing world. When Dan is not running the Chicago institution, he can be found spending time with his family, volunteering, and coaching,
DAN STERN, or as he is known behind the bar "Destiny" has been working in the bar/restaurant industry for over 15 years with experience in all facets. Currently working at two beloved cocktail bars in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, The Wayland and Mister Paradise. Born in New York City to an Israeli Mother and American Father, his family has always had strong ties and constant support for the State of Israel. With a pure joy for the creative aspect of mixology, he has contributed and curated cocktail menus for restaurants and specific events in New York City. Currently, you can find Dan/Destiny sharing his bar/mixology knowledge and charm thru the Instagram account @aBartenderNamedDestiny
Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at UJA-Federation New York and was the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. A frequent speaker in communities and campuses around the United States and Israel with over 1 million views of his online videos and essays, he was named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America. His 21 books and 6 albums of original music include the global Jewish anthem "Olam Chesed Yibaneh" and the Rabbis Against Gun Violence anthology "None Shall Make Them Afraid." He has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions. He and his wife Neshama Carlebach live in New York, where they are raising their five children
Mendel Davis is a Chase Private Client Banker and a self-taught chef from Baltimore, Maryland. Raised by a black dad and Egyptian mom, he is passionate about all things food related as well as the Jewish Multiracial Network. He specializes in meats and prefers the Sous Vide Method of cooking.
Tagan Engel is the founder of The Table Underground radio show, podcast and website where she records stories of food, community, anti-racism and creative social justice work. She has over 25 years experience in food systems work including as a professional chef, entrepreneur, grassroots organizer, policy maker, and food business consultant. Tagan is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors of the revolt at the Sobibor death camp, and she carries the legacy of their liberation throughout her work.
Pamela Wiznitzer has a true passion and zest for the industry that is seen and tasted in every drink she serves and also transcends the bar. Since 2006, Pamela has been working throughout NYC at many notable venues and currently oversees the beverage programs for the iconic Big Apple Circus and The Lookup - a rooftop bar in midtown. She was nominated as one of the top 10 bartenders for the 2014, 2015 and 2016 "American Bartender of the Year" award at Tales of the cocktail and was named the "2014 Bartender of the Year" by the Village Voice. Additionally, she was named as one of Food & Wine Magazine's top 10 Rising Star Mixologists, an inductees to the "Dames Hall of Fame" in 2015 and one of Wine Enthusiast Magazine's "40 Under 40" in 2015.
Mitchell Davis is Chief Strategy Officer of the James Beard Foundation, a cookbook author, a journalist, and a scholar with a Ph.D. in Food Studies from NYU. With the Beard Foundation for almost 27 years, Davis has created and/or overseen many of the Foundation’s most impactful initiatives, including the annual JBF Food Summit, the JBF Chefs Boot Camp for Policy and Change, and the JBF Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program. He has written several cookbooks, including My Provence (Alta Editions) with Michelin three-star chef Laurent Gras, which won the IACP’s “Judges’ Choice” award in 2013, and Kitchen Sense (Clarkson Potter, 2006). In 2017 epicurious.com included Davis on their list of the “100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time.” For his contributions to the ever-changing food landscape, in 2019 Heritage Radio Network inducted Davis into their Hall of Fame.
Rabbi Deborah Prinz lectures about chocolate and religion around the world. Prinz blogs at onthechocolatetrail.org, the Huffington Post, the Forward and ReformJudaism.org. She was awarded a Starkoff Fellowship and a Director’s Fellowship from the American Jewish Archives as well as a Gilder Lehrman Fellowship from the Rockefeller Library to pursue this research. This project stirs age-old passions for chocolate and religion using information gathered from travel in several countries, including Belgium, Canada, England, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. It spans several cultures, countries, centuries, and convictions, exploring how faith traditions share consumption, ritual and business interests in chocolate. She recently served the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) as Director of Program and Member Services and the Director of the Joint Commission on Rabbinic Mentoring. She currently mentors through the Mayerson program at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).
Carmit Oron is the Co-Founder & CEO if The ACT Hub. She has more than 20 years of experience in executive positions in various organizations where she gained a deep understanding of startup challenges and management of complex operations. Carmit's passion is working with flexible, dedicated, and passionate founders, supporting their growth. Carmit’s most significant advantage is her ability to combine strong business skills to create proven, outstanding results.
Ari Miller has been named Best Chef by Philadelphia Magazine within a year since Musi opened. The restaurant created a higher standard in the Philadelphia food world for using local, hyper-seasonal produce, cheeses and meats with Miller drawing upon flavors honed after a decade spent in Israel, but with restraint. Musi also creates a collaborative space, drawing together our cheesemakers, butchers, and foragers together with Pennsylvania’s very small beer and linens producers. Musi hosts pop ups frequently, such as the Frizwit, which brings in a local brewery and puts out the very best cheesesteak in Philadelphia (made with responsibly sourced Primal Supply beef and Abundantly Good cheese of an upcycled milk program). As Hillary Dixler Canavan put it, while naming Musi one of Eater’s 16 Best New Restaurants: “Musi prioritizes the things that diners ought to demand — a menu informed by local product and a kitchen connected to the region’s best purveyors — but the restaurant doesn’t beat you over the head with it.”
Fany Gerson, the country’s most authoritative voice on Mexican sweets, has been featured in the New York Times, Food and Wine, Fine Cooking, Saveur Magazine, Fine Cooking, Fast Company and New York magazines, among others. She launched the acclaimed La Newyorkina, an artisanal Mexican frozen treats and sweets business in 2010. She was the the Chef and co-founder of Dough, an artisan gourmet doughnut shop in New York and the upcoming Fan-Fan Doughnuts shop scheduled to later this year. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Fany has worked in a range of fine-dining kitchens around the world including 3 Michelin starred Akelare in Spain and Eleven Madison Park in New York. She has written three books, My Sweet Mexico, which was nominated for a James beard award 2010 for Best baking and pastry cookbook Paletas and Mexican Ice Cream. Fany also opened her first brick and mortar for La Newyorkina on October 2016 in the West Village of New York City, was a mentor in the WE NYC Women’s leadership program in 2016 and recognized as a Latin woman leader in 2017 by El Diario.
Zoë Komarin likes to call herself a Food Curator. As the creator of ZoeFoodParty; a pop-up concept that allows her to bridge her love of cooking, community, and art, Zoë puts the emphasis on shared experiences and getting messy over all else. Currently, her LA-based pop-ups have created a buzz, featuring addictive & unique breakfast combinations served up in fluffy handmade pita each week. Zoë spent her formative years in food living and working (and eating) in Tel Aviv, Israel where she co-founded the now cult-like Cafe Xoho. Her goal is visceral eating with the added bonus of human connectivity and if you are lucky, a rare amount of eye contact.
Jonathan Posner is a Chef, a Shochet (a Kosher animal slaughterer/butcher), educator, and Rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In 2015, Jonathan founded the culinary events company Wandering Foods Productions to challenge himself as a cook, an entrepreneur, and a Jew and to breathe some youth and life back into Jewish cuisine. Since entering Rabbinical school, his mission has grown to focus ever-more on using food and cooking to open doors into a life of meaningful Jewish culture and practice. He hopes that the productions Wandering Foods puts on will inspire you, make you feel proud of who you are, and that you leave full and fulfilled.
Sam Radutzky and Josh Freund are award-winning documentary filmmakers with nearly 20 years of experience between the two of them. They have made films for Fortune 500 companies and Grammy-winning musicians. Do U Want It?, their first feature documentary film, about the New Orleans music scene, gained acceptance into film festivals across the country and is streaming online. Sam and Josh are currently producing their second feature documentary film, about the 113-year-old candy company, Joyva. Watch a preview in our Anytime Content!
Naama Haviv Naama is Director of Community Engagement for MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a role to which she brings more than a decade of experience in social justice advocacy, coalition-building, and international development. A childhood Mizrachi/Israeli immigrant to the US, Naama has had a lifelong fascination with how food can tell the American story – a story she explores through her robust collection of “regrettable food” cookbooks from 1930s-1970s America.
Aliza Kline is the Co-Founder and CEO of OneTable (onetable.org) a platform for young adults across the US to end their week with intention and create unique Shabbat dinners. Since 2015, more than 150,000 people have connected over 35,000 dinners. Also the founding executive director of Mayyim Hayyim, Aliza has devoted her career to re-imaginging Jewish ritual open to the full diversity of the community. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her partner Bradley Solmsen and three daughters.
Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder is the Director of Education for Be'chol Lashon. She teaching cooking classes in real life and online for a variety of organizations including Kveller.com and Honeymoon Israel. Her dissertation focused on Jewish cookbooks in the 19th century and she has an extensive collection of historic and contemporary cookbooks. Most weeks she can be found making challah online!
Rachel Levin is a San Francisco-based journalist who has written for such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, and Eater, where she was the San Francisco restaurant critic. A columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, she is the author of LOOK BIG: And Other Tips for Surviving Animal Encounters of All Kinds (Ten Speed) and co-author of EAT SOMETHING: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews, published in March, by Chronicle Books. byrachellevin.com
Jonathan Goldstein made Aliya in 2006 and got his hands in the dirt, earning an MA in Land of Israel Studies and Archeology at Bar Ilan University as well as the Ministry of Tourism's Guiding Certification. Since then, he and his company, Cicerone Travel, have been creating Jewish heritage travel experiences around the world, exploring questions of identity and our place in this wild world we live in. His primary areas of expertise include Israel, Central Europe, New York City, and the last 4,000 years of Jewish history.
Lara Rabinovitch, PhD (NYU, 2012) is a writer and specialist in food culture and immigrant history. She is co-curator of the upcoming exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center, “I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Jewish Deli.” Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Saveur, The Globe & Mail, and other media outlets as well as apps such as Google Maps. She co-edited the book Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language & Culture and was Consulting Producer on “City of Gold,” the 2016 documentary about the Pulitzer prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold.
Ben Katchor is the author of, among other books, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer; The Cardboard Valise; and The Jew of New York. He was the first cartoonist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at Parsons/The New School in New York City.
Eddy Portnoy is the Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He is the author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press 2017).
Chef Marlene Bernstein is an entrepreneur and passionate natural food chef with over 9 years experience in the food industry. She is classically trained in French cuisine, but derives much of her culinary inspiration from her Mediterranean roots. Her love of cooking was ignited during a summer abroad in Florence while was studying photography. Needless to say, Italian food is one of her favorite cuisines. Her favorite cooking technique is braising and favorite ingredient is fig, because they are pretty close to perfect. When Marlene is not in the kitchen you can find her at the local farmers market, traveling or squeezing in a last minute dance class.
Maxwell Britten is a James Beard Award-winning beverage professional and entrepreneur whose widely-ranging capabilities have made him one of the industry’s leading personas. In 2009, Britten’s work at the Brooklyn Heights cocktail destination was recognized by StarChefs with that year’s Rising Star Mixologist award. He was the founding Bar Director of Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, which went on to place regularly as one of the World’s 50 Best Bars, and won a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar Program in 2016. Britten is the co-creator of The Liquor Cabinet: an encyclopedic app for connoisseurs and tradesmen cataloguing classic recipes, tools, spirits and their history. In 2016, Britten joined GrandLife Hotels as a business partner to its transportive ne plus ultra subterranean jazz and cocktail club, The Django, located beneath The Roxy Hotel.
Natasha Feldman is a Webby-nominated chef, host, and west coast native obsessed with making healthy food taste fantastic. Her cooking celebrates the bounty of seasonal produce and the fun of kitchen improvisation — from throwing together a casual Mediterranean feast to eating a decadent chocolate cake straight from the pan. Natasha has appeared on Food Network's Cutthroat Kitchen, Chopped U, and Craving Healthy, and is a regular contributor to KTLA News, PopSugar, Hallmark Home & Family, So Yummy, and Refinery29. Be sure to follow her culinary adventures on Instagram @noshwithtash.