Sharon Cohen Anisfeld has brought her passion for activism into her role as dean of the rabbinical school at Hebrew College, inspiring her students to blend both engagement with tradition and engagement with social justice. Ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1990, Anisfeld served for many years as a Hillel rabbi at Yale, where she led the university’s first women’s Seder in 1993, an annual event that led to her co-editing the two-volume Women’s Seder Sourcebook and Women’s Passover Companion ten years later. She also organized a groundbreaking national conference for Jewish women at Yale in 1997. She then shifted focus to helping shape Jewish leaders at Hebrew College, becoming dean of students in 2004 and dean of the rabbinical school in 2006. Anisfeld has been praised for encouraging her students to pursue their own vision of the rabbinate, investigate their own spiritual paths, and act as leaders in social action. She has been honored several times as one of Newsweek/Daily Beast’s 50 most influential rabbis.

Melanie Crowder is the award-winning author of several books for young readers, including Audacity, A Nearer Moon and Parched, as well as the forthcoming An Uninterrupted View of the Sky and Three Pennies. The author lives with her family on Colorado’s Front Range, where she has worked as an educator for more than a decade.

Melanie’s books have been awarded the Jefferson Cup, the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award, the SCBWI Crystal Kite, and the Bulletin Blue Ribbon; they have been recognized as a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist, Colorado Book Awards Finalist, Junior Library Guild selection, YALSA Top Ten Books For Young Adults, ILA Notable Book for a Global Society, Parents’ Choice Silver Medal, BookBrowse Editor’s Choice, BookPage Top Pick, and The Washington Post Best Children’s Books for April.

Visit her online at www.melaniecrowder.com.