Rabbi Laura Geller is the principal rabbi at Temple Emanuel, one of the largest Reform synagogues in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was among the first class of women rabbis to be ordained in the Reform movement.

Rabbi Elyse Frishman is a Reform rabbi and spiritual leader of Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, N.J. She served as editor of the Mishkan T’filah, only the fourth prayer book in the 150-year history of American Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Barry Freundel is the leader of Kesher Israel, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Washington, D.C., whose members include a U.S. senator and a number of other government officials. The congregation maintains an eruv in the middle of the nation’s capital.

Rabbi Andy Bachman and his wife, Rachel Altstein, are leaders in the burgeoning emergent synagogue movement. They are founders of Brooklyn Jews, an informal congregation of young, urban Jews in the New York borough. In 2007, Andy became the head rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, the borough’s largest Reform synagogue. He writes a blog that is widely read […]

Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founder of IKAR, a Los Angeles-based progressive Jewish community focused sharply on social justice.

Rabbi Morris Allen heads Beth Jacob Congregation, a Conservative congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn. Allen is behind a push to make kosher food meet certain ethical standards, such as paying workers a fair wage. The result, Magen Tzedek, or “justice certification,” is gaining ground in many Conservative synagogues and households. He blogs about keeping ethically kosher.

Isaac Jerusalmi is a professor emeritus of Bible and Semitic languages at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He wrote the introduction to Stanford University’s digitized Ladino library.

Rabbi Stephen Pearce leads Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue and San Francisco’s largest Jewish congregation.

Rabbi Mendel Lifshitz and his wife, Esther, direct Chabad Jewish Center of Idaho in Boise. The center is part of Chabad Lubavitch, a New York community of Hasidim.