Rabbi Gabbi Sar-Shalom is a Jewish Universalist Rabbi. She works as the Pastoral and Spiritual Care Coordinator at a public hospital and as a Pastoral Carer at the ARK Centre. Gabbi is interested in reimagining Jewish rituals to be more uplifting and spiritual.
During the day I have the immense privilege of being the Museum Director of the Jewish Holocaust Centre. It is more than a job, it is like nothing else. In the evenings I am a mother, a partner, a friend, a thinker, a reader, a writer, a lover of good food and wine and someone who craves nature and the outdoors (but never gets enough). Finally, music is my passion, it feeds my soul.
Yochi Rappeport, Executive Director of Women of the Wall, was born in Safed and raised in the Orthodox environment of the Old City of her birth. Yochi's identity as an Orthodox woman and feminist shows that a woman may indeed possess both attributes. Married and the mother of toddler girl, Yochi strives to make Jerusalem and Israel more tolerant places for her daughter’s generation and beyond.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer is the Times of Israel's New Media editor, lives in Israel with her two kids in a village next to rolling fields. Sarah likes taking pictures, climbing roofs, and talking to strangers. She is the author of the book Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered. Sarah is a work in progress.
Talia Shnier is in Year 6 at Mount Scopus and loves to write stories with her friends. She enjoys reading, playing with her dog, Hope and building Lego creations. Last year she achieved her 2nd Pum (Black Belt) in Taekwondo.
She wrote this speech for the Manuel Gelman public speaking competition in 2019 and was delighted to receive 3rd prize against some very accomplished, but fortunately friendly, competition.
E. Rothman is a former magazine editor and journalism professor. She now works in communications for a major international conservation organisation and other animal-related causes.
Hadassah Brenner serves as a combat medic and soldier in the IDF. She finds that writing eases her mind and helps her better understand the many frustrations and complicated thoughts that her job as a soldier entails. Her first poetry collection “The Warrior Princess Once Said,” was published in July 2019 by the Leaf Publishing House.
Through her writing, Hadassah attempts to understand and explain her journey and experiences as a solider. What does it actually mean to be a soldier? Is there more than one kind of war that we all must fight? Can poetry be a weapon, if for every battle in life, she has set out with her sword dipped in ink, ready to write it all down?
Sharon Branicki is a graduate of Mount Scopus College. She works as a Learning Support Teacher and is also co-founder of Strive Online Education, which offers one-on-one tutoring via video-call.
Alexandra Ebert Gold is an eighteen-year old writer living in Manhattan and attending The New School in pursuit of a degree in Journalism & Design. Ebert Gold has studied poetry and flash fiction at Wellesley College, as well as poetry and its performance at the University of California Berkeley. Her professional literary studies originate in Paris, France, where she spent the summer studying creative writing and was given the creative writing student award by her professor at the close of the month. Her previous publications include her piece “Nod at Me”, a Bay Area Writing Awards finalist piece featured in digital magazine The Ellipsis and the three literary
magazines she has contributed to and edited in the aforementioned academic programs.