Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B'nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. A Houston native and graduate of Amherst College, Rabbi Block was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1991, and he received his DD, honoris causa, in 2016.
A member of the CCAR Board of Trustees, currently serving as vice president of organizational relationships, Block is the editor of
The Mussar Torah Commentary (CCAR Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. He also contributed to several earlier CCAR anthologies, including
Inscribed: Encounters with the Ten Commandments,
The Sacred Exchange, The Sacred Encounter,
Navigating the Journey, and
A Life of Meaning: Embracing Reform Judaism's Sacred Path, and he is a regular contributor to the
CCAR Journal. Rabbi Block currently serves as faculty dean at URJ Henry S. Jacobs Camp, similar to a role he previously held for twenty-one years at URJ Greene Family Camp. He is a past board chair of Planned Parenthood of South Texas. He is the proud father of Robert and Daniel.
Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, PhD, is the Head of Seminary at Hebrew Union College overseeing the rabbinical and cantorial programs. From 2018- June 2025 she served as Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost and Associate Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College. She received a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and was ordained by Hebrew Union College in New York in 1993. She earned her doctoral degree in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She is the founder of the American Values, Religious Voices campaign, co-editor of American Values, Religious Voices: 100 Days, 100 Letters (University of Cincinnati Press, 2019, with the second volume entitled, American Values, Religious Voices: Letters of Hope from People of Faith, forthcoming in Fall 2022). She was associate editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (CCAR Press, 2008), which won the Jewish Book Council’s 2009 Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award. Her other writings include Figurative Language in Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of Samuel (Brill, 2006) and articles on metaphor, biblical poetry, and biblical conceptions of God. Her current research focuses on an in-depth study of biblical metaphors for God entitled “God in the Biblical Imagination: The Mechanics and Theology of Metaphor.”
Jonah Dov Pesner serves as the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He has led the Religious Action Center since 2015. Rabbi Pesner also serves as Senior Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism, a position to which he was appointed to in 2011. Named one of the most influential rabbis in America by
Newsweek magazine, he is an inspirational leader and tireless advocate for social justice.
Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner’s work has focused on encouraging Jewish communities to reach across lines of race, class, and faith in campaigns for social justice. In 2006, he founded Just Congregations (now incorporated into the Religious Action Center), which engaged clergy, professional, and volunteer leaders in interfaith efforts in pursuit of social justice. Rabbi Pesner was a primary leader in the successful Massachusetts campaign for health care access that has provided health care coverage to hundreds of thousands and which became a nationwide model for reform. Over the course of his career, he has also led and supported campaigns for racial justice, economic opportunity, immigration reform, LGBTQ equality, human rights, and a variety of other causes. He is dedicated to building bridges to collectively confront anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate and bigotry. His forthcoming book,
Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority, published by CCAR Press in 2018. Rabbi Pesner has trained and mentored students on all four campuses of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and gives speeches in interfaith and secular venues all over the world. Rabbi Pesner serves as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, JOIN for Justice, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and the New England Center for Children. He is a member of the Leadership Team for the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. He has served as a scholar for the Wexner Foundation, American Jewish World Service, the Nexus USA Summit, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, among others. Ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1997, Rabbi Pesner was a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel in Boston and at Temple Israel in Westport, Conn. A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Bronx High School of Science, Rabbi Pesner is married to Dana S. Gershon, an attorney. They have four daughters: Juliet, Noa, Bobbie, and Cate.
