Shmuel Shepkaru is an associate professor of Judaic history at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he teaches a course on Jewish mysticism.

Rabbi Jonathan Schick is an adjunct philosophy and Jewish studies professor at the University of North Texas in Denton. He is an expert on Jewish education and has served as headmaster of two Jewish prep schools. He writes a monthly ethics column.

Henry Eaton is a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Texas in Denton. He is an expert on the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism.

Lee Shai Weissbach is a history professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. He is an expert on small-town Jewish life in America, especially in the South, where surveys show traditional observance tends to be lower than in other areas.

Michael Weil heads the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. The federation is working to revitalize the local Jewish community in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which cut the city’s Jewish population by one-third.

David Patterson is a professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is an expert on the Holocaust and serves as an adviser to two U.S. Holocaust museums.

Julian Henri Preisler is an archivist and genealogist in the Eastern Panhandle region of West Virginia. He formerly ran a website about West Virginia Jewish history.

Sharon Miller is the principal of Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Fla., the first publicly funded Hebrew-language school in the U.S.

Jack Kugelmass is an anthropology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he is also director of its Jewish studies center. He specializes in American and European Jewry, Israel and Jews in New York.