Elise Provident is an undergraduate student pursuing an Art History Honors degree from Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is passionate about multiculturalism and gender diversity and plans on pursuing a career in art historical research or museum work. She would like to thank Distinguished Professor Dr. Samantha Baskind for her indispensable guidance and unwavering confidence.

The descendent of ten generations of esteemed rabbis, Naamah Kelman has honored her heritage by becoming the first woman rabbi ordained in Israel. Kelman immigrated to Israel in 1976 and immersed herself in Jewish education, becoming coordinator of the Florence Melton Adult Mini School at Hebrew University and developing NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth) programs in Israel for American teenagers. After her ordination in 1992 at Hebrew Union College’s Jerusalem campus, Kelman served as director of educational initiatives at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion from 1997–2003 and created Beit Midrash: The Liberal Yeshivah, as well as the Pedagogic Center for Early Childhood Education. She directed HUC’s Year in Israel Program for four years and cofounded the Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counselling in 2005. In 2009 she became the first female dean of HUC’s Jerusalem campus, and she has used her position not only to help guide the next generation of rabbis but to strengthen HUC’s relationships with seminaries in Germany and England.

Prof. Yael Guilat, art historian, researcher, and lecturer in Art and Visual Culture, was Head of the Art Institute (2004-2014) and Head of the Multidisciplinary Graduate Program in Humanities and Arts (2015-2021) at Oranim College. In 2015 she founded the Art Based Research (ABR) program for Advanced Studies. Since 2021 she has been the Chair of the Association for Women’s Art and Gender Research in Israel. Guilat has published several books about Art and Visual Culture in Israel and many articles in academic journals and anthologies. Her publications are interdisciplinary perspective-based and deal with feminist art, gender and transnationalism, interculture encounters in Israeli art, memory and bereavement, art and precarity, motherhood and nation, and Israeli-Yemenite arts and crafts. Guilat is an active curator who has staged art exhibitions at the Ein Harod Museum and Um-el Pahem Museum, among other venues in Israel and abroad.

Yaakov Lipsker is a PhD candidate at the Kekst Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary. His dissertation examines the formative history of the Zionist movement in the Russian Empire. Lipsker is a 2023 ASEEES Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Completion Fellow.