Deborah Schneider has been a Jewish educator both in the United States and abroad for the past 20 years, working with children of all ages in various Jewish settings. Deborah spent the past five years working for Congregation Kol Emeth, a conservative synagogue on the Peninsula as their Education Director, expanding their family educational programs and instituting two cutting edge Hebrew programs into the curriculum. She earned her MA in Modern Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and her BA in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. She currently lives in Mountain View with her two daughters and their male Beta fish named Dorothy.
Deborah's educational philosophy is to create an open and nurturing atmosphere where children can grow and feel free to ask questions and challenge themselves while having a good time and fostering a strong Jewish identity. She sees a committed family and a strong supportive Jewish community as the foundations for a lifetime of Jewish learning. Or Shalom has a history of providing this to its students and its school has a reputation for being a fun and nurturing environment to its students, encouraging them to develop their own sense of identity and spirituality within the Jewish world.
David Cohen-Tzedek is our Cantorial Soloist, Choir Director, and B'nai-Mitzvah Tutor. He received his early music education in Tel-Aviv, Israel, where he grew up, studying Voice with Na'ama Gannot and Musicianship with Arie Shapira. In 1999 He moved to San Francisco where he studied cantorial singing with veteran San Francisco Cantor Julius Blackman, and Composition with W.A. Mathieu, and took part in groups such as Contemporary Performance Ensemble, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. In addition to his work at Or Shalom, he reads Torah and sings at services around the Bay Area.
David is dedicated to creating and maintaining genuine communal musical creativity and takes pleasure in discovering the meanings of Jewish liturgy through music-making. He believes that participatory ritual and musical self-sufficiency are essential to a community's spiritual practice.
Shae is a senior at San Francisco State University, majoring in American Indian Studies with a minor in Journalism. She grew up in Sacramento, CA where she went to community college and was editor in chief of the campus newspaper and magazine. While her beginnings were in writing, for the past three years she has been concentrating on developing her photography skills. Religious studies has always been a passion for Shae. She was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints where she attended Seminary for four years.
Teen Advisor - Jonathan Moss
Contact teenadvisor@orshalom.org
Jonathan Moss joins us as Teen Advisor after many years of experience in teaching religious school and teen programs across the Bay Area as well as Southern California and Bnei Mitzvah Tutoring. He earned his BA in Jewish Studies from the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He also lived and worked at the Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center in upstate New York helping to create and facilitate programs in Jewish spirituality for adults, kids and teens. He is currently training as a psychotherapist in the MA Counseling Psychology program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
