Peg Smith

Peg Smith is chief executive officer of the American Camp Association, which includes Christian and Jewish as well as secular camps among its 7,000 members. The mission of her camp experiences is to enrich the lives of children and adults.  

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Jonathan D. Sarna

Jonathan D. Sarna is professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He is co-author of Religion and State in the American Jewish Experience and author of American Judaism: A History, which won the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Book of the Year Award in 2004.

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Jenna Weissman-Joselit

Jenna Weissman-Joselit, a visiting professor of Jewish History at Princeton University. She studies closely the relationship between the material culture and personal identity. She has authored a number of books, including The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950 (Henry Colt, 1994) which received the National Jewish Book Award in History, and A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and […]

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Swasti Bhattacharyya

Swasti Bhattacharyya is associate professor of philosophy and religion at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. She specializes in environmental ethics, comparative religious ethics, peace studies, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, ancient Judaism and early Christianity.

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Linda Mercadante

The Rev. Linda Mercadante is a professor of theology at Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. She is the author of Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious (2014). Her focuses are spirituality, victimization, gender, addiction, sin and evil, imagery of God, and the Shakers.

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Joel Dinnerstein

Rabbi Joel Dinnerstein of Deerfield Beach, Fla., has directed a Jewish 12-step counseling program, Ohr Ki Tov, since 1985. Inspired by Hasidic Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, this organization integrates prayer, song and storytelling with the 12 steps and Jewish learning, values and practice for recovery. Dinnerstein was the first rabbi to become a certified addiction counselor; he […]

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Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others

Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others is a New York City-based recovery organization led by volunteers who help Jewish alcoholics, chemically dependent people and their families, friends and associates in a nurturing Jewish environment by conducting retreats and other events. It is not affiliated with any particular branch of Judaism and is sponsored by […]

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