Seven Leaders Shaping the Jewish Future

The seven rabbis ordained in Jerusalem today bring an extraordinary range of experiences to the Jewish community. Among them are a veteran Bible teacher who spent 30 years shaping young Israeli minds, a published poet, a journalist, and three leaders who were already serving congregations before embarking on rabbinical studies. Their journeys began in places as varied as Russia, Cleveland, and the banks of the Jordan River, yet all were led to the same destination. What unites them is not where they come from, but a shared calling to serve the Jewish people and help shape its future.

The members of this year's ordination class arrive at the rabbinate by strikingly different paths, yet many share a lifelong commitment to education and Jewish learning. Jerusalem native Yossi Elmackias spent 33 years as a Bible and Jewish culture educator, rising from classroom teacher to school principal before answering a call to the rabbinate. Alongside his studies, he remains active in community life, human rights advocacy, and as a tour guide helping visitors connect with Israel's history and landscape. Evyatar Guzner, who grew up in a secular family in Kiryat Tivon, traces his Jewish journey to the influence of his grandparents, Holocaust survivors from Hungary, and to the Reform community he joined after his Bar Mitzvah. Today he teaches Bible and Jewish Thought at Leo Baeck High School in Haifa, continuing the work of helping others explore Jewish texts, ideas, and identity.

Questions of heritage, belonging, and Jewish continuity also shaped Olya Malov's journey. Born in Russia, she made aliyah in 2005 and views her path to the rabbinate as a return to family roots interrupted by revolution generations ago. After discovering liberal Judaism and the possibility of women serving as rabbis, she built a career with the Jewish Agency in Israel and abroad, including a period as an emissary at Brooklyn College's Hillel. Like Malov, Julia Ullman Hevron has navigated multiple Jewish worlds. Raised in Cleveland and educated in the United States, she worked in Jewish education in places ranging from Ohio to Shanghai before making aliyah and continuing her rabbinic studies in Israel. Today she helps cultivate the next generation of progressive Jewish leadership through the World Union for Progressive Judaism's global youth and young adult programs.

Several members of the class are already serving congregations and communities across the country. Galilee natives Rina Levanon and Hadas Paster-Bachar both grew up on kibbutzim and have dedicated their careers to building vibrant Jewish life. Levanon, who returned to the place she grew up- Kibbutz Kfar Blum - with her own family and has experienced the upheaval of the war on Israel's northern border, serves as a regional rabbi and recently published a poetry collection reflecting on war, faith, family, and home. Paster-Bachar, an educator and community builder, helped establish innovative Jewish learning initiatives before becoming acting rabbi of the Yuval community in Gedera. Ofer Chizik already serves as rabbi of Kehilat Halev in Tel Aviv while pursuing a parallel career in journalism. An award-winning reporter and scholar, he is now completing doctoral research on the history of the Reform Movement in Israel, studying the very institution that has now ordained him.

Yaron Horowitz, member of the Hebrew Union College Board of Governors and Chair of the Israel Board of Advisors, conferred the degrees. Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste, Director of the Israel Rabbinical Program, ordained the class and gave the ordination charge.

In her charge, Rabbi Avnon-Benveniste named the work ahead as Hashavat Aveidah, the mitzvah of returning what has been lost:

Today, two hands will be placed upon you. One hand will reach toward the heavens, and the other will extend toward humanity.

To restore the State of Israel to those who have lost hope in it, from whom it has grown distant, and some of whom have grown distant from it. To restore to the nation its stolen soul. To help communities sustain their bonds, even when those bonds are torn.

Do not give up. Do not accept despair as the final conclusion. This is your mission, and it begins today.

For the world remembers. And the soul remembers. And even what has been lost can still return to us and once again become our own.

A class that returns to its roots

The ordinees will be joined by four honorees, three of them alumni of Hebrew Union College's Class of 2001. Rabbi Gregory Kotlyar '01 was the first rabbi to lead the Reform Movement in Moscow and across Russia, and he now directs the Conversions Department and Russian-Speaking Community Development at the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism. Rabbi Mira Raz '01 has served for more than three decades as a rabbi, teacher and spiritual leader, including 17 years in Netanya and 11 at Kehillat Daniel in Jaffa. Joanne Doades, M.A.R.E. '01, who grew up in an unaffiliated home, built her career in Jewish outreach and family education. The three will receive honorary doctorates, Kotlyar and Raz in divinity and Doades in education.

Twenty-five years separate those honorees' ordinations from this one. In that time the Israeli Reform Movement has gone from a small presence to a network of communities led by rabbis ordained by Hebrew Union College in Israel, and the people being ordained now are carrying that work forward.

In presenting the Honorary Degrees, Dean Nachman Shai delivered this charge:

In a generation in which it is so easy to become extreme, to divide, and to distrust, you are called upon to be men and women of hope. In a generation in which so many have lost faith in institutions and leaders, you are called upon to be a moral voice. And at a time when Israel is searching for its way between Judaism and democracy, between identity and partnership, you are called upon to remind us that we do not have to choose between them - because, at its best, Jewish tradition itself calls upon us to bring them together.

The Doctor of Humane Letters was awarded to Dr. Ilana Dayan-Orbach, who has anchored the investigative program Uvda since 1993.

Dayan-Orbach, who also addressed the ceremony, was born in Argentina in 1964 and came to Israel at age six. She grew up in Tel Aviv's Yad Eliyahu neighborhood and began her career at Army Radio, where she became the first female soldier in the station's history to serve as a reporter. She went on to earn LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees at Yale, teach constitutional law and freedom of expression at Tel Aviv University, and win the Sokolov Prize for journalism. Hebrew Union College chose her for her investigative work, her struggle for press freedom and human rights, and her commitment to Israel's democratic values.

Addressing the new ordinees, Dayan-Orbach expressed:

Of course, we must continue to expose, shake things up, annoy and dismay, as we like to do - but we must make sure that beneath every such revelation there is an organizing principle and a rationale. We must not surrender ourselves to our sources or relinquish our duty to put the story in context. We must make room for human feeling," she said, adding: "We must fight, constantly, against numbness; fight for the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. Shine a light into the corners where stories that do not make headlines are pushed aside.

Hebrew Union College President Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D., in a message shared with the ordinees on the eve of the ceremony, told them:

Each of you understands the importance of hope to get us through these extraordinary times. Hope brought each of you to this day. Through years of study, on the heels of a global pandemic, and through the challenges of war, you remained committed to learning, to service, and to the Jewish future. … to our new rabbis: tomorrow marks neither an ending nor a beginning, but the continuation of a covenant of service. The Jewish people need teachers, builders, healers, and leaders. They need rabbis. They need you.

Provost Judah Cohen, Ph.D., who brought greetings from all four Hebrew Union College campuses, asked what it means to offer a blessing in an uncertain season. Among his answers:

…that you dare to be scholars in an age of Artificial Intelligence. You dare to learn before you teach. You dare to wrestle with the Torah, and grow closer to our tradition as a result. … You dare to lead when our knowledge is broken.

We will bless you for teaching Torah, even when others seek to lower your voice. We will bless you for leading us by consent, even when others try to claim our communities for themselves. We bless you for our future. And may we, in turn, be blessed by you.

All photos of our ordinees were taken by photographer Yonit Schiller.