Reform Rabbi Rachel Cowan is executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which uses Torah study, prayer, mindfulness meditation, yoga, and spiritual direction and retreats to nurture deeper spirituality among rabbis, cantors and lay people. Rabbi Cowan is author to a number of books and publications, including Growing Up Yanqui (Viking Juvenile, 1975) and Mixed Blessings (Penguin Books, […]

Stacy Abramson is executive director of Reboot, which seeks to “reboot” Jewish traditions, particularly for young people, through innovation, including salons across the country, journals, books and films. It’s based in New York City.

The Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights (ICIR) is an organization formed by California religious leaders to support the rights and fair treatment of immigrants. Rev. Deborah Lee is project director.

In December 2009, the Center for Immigration Studies released results of a poll conducted by Zogby International. Among its findings: Many people of faith want overall immigration reduced, regardless of what their religious leaders are advocating on the issue. The findings drew criticism from the Public Religion Research Institute.

Read about a 2009 study on churches’ outreach to first-generation immigrants in North America. LifeWay Research conducted the analysis for the North American Mission Board, the domestic missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Rabbi Howard Avruhm Addison is the co-author of Jewish Spiritual Direction: An Innovative Guide from Traditional & Contemporary Sources (Jewish Lights, 2006) and co-founder of Lev Shomea, the first institute to train spiritual directors in the Jewish tradition. A congregational rabbi for 30 years, he is a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and the G. G. Scholem […]

Rabbi Irwin Kula is president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a think tank dedicated to training Jewish leaders. He wrote Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life (Hyperion, September 2006), among others, and is a highly regarded commentator on the modern approach to understanding and practicing Judaism.

Debra Kolodny is executive director of Nehirim, an organization that aims to provide programming that empowers the LGBT Jewish community. She is also a volunteer and professional activist in the faith, labor, social justice, women’s, and LGBT communities.

Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin is director of Chabad.org and a spokesman for Chabad-Lubavitch, a branch of Hasidic Judaism that tries to reach out to American Jews who it believes have not been exposed to “authentic” Judaism.