Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is vice president of American Jewish University. He studies environmental ethics, racial and economic justice, philosophy and the interplay between religion and science.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a writer, speaker and teacher at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. He is also a visiting professor of Jewish spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union. He wrote the book Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001).

Luke A. Powery is assistant professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching (2009).

Juan M. Floyd-Thomas is associate professor of African-American religious history at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School and a member of the cultural resources team for the African American Lectionary. He is also an expert on religion and protest music and black religious experience in America.

Building Jewish Bridges is an outreach program run by the Jewish Community Federation of Greater East Bay in San Francisco for intermarried couples. It provides support for honoring the Jewish tradition.

Leonard Saxe directs the Steinhardt Social Research Institute and the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He has conducted studies on many aspects of Jewish life, including intermarriage, the impact of Birthright Israel and antisemitism on college campuses.

Ahmed Bedier is the founder and past executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In 2006, for the first time, he met with Tampa U.S. Customs and TSA officials to discuss the travel plans of local residents preparing for hajj. He now serves as the president of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human […]

Shakeel Syed is the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. In 2006, the council organized a meeting between hajj tour directors and imams leading the pilgrimage and U.S. Customs and TSA officials at Los Angeles International Airport. The council repeated the meeting in 2007 and 2012 as a town hall event open to […]

A national director of Teen-Aid, a nonprofit organization started in 1981 to try to reduce teen pregnancies. The group, based in Spokane, Wash., believes the best method is abstinence education. Its Web site lists laws and statistics pertaining to sexuality, education and government funding for all 50 states.