Volume 1:
Rabbi Hara Person is the Chief Executive of Central Conference of American Rabbis. Previously, she was the CCAR's Chief Strategy Officer. In that capacity, she oversaw the Communications Department and served as Publisher of CCAR Press, and worked with leadership on overall organizational strategy. Rabbi Person was ordained in 1998 from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, after graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College (1986) and receiving an MA in Fine Arts from New York University’s International Center of Photography (1992). She served as Educator at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue from 1990-1996, and was the Adjunct Rabbi there from 1998-2019. Since 1998, Rabbi Person has been the High Holy Day Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Olam, Fire Island Pines, NY. Before coming to the CCAR, Rabbi Person was the Editor-in-Chief of URJ Books and Music, where she was responsible for the revision of
The Torah: A Modern Commentary(2005) and the publication of many significant projects, including the
Aleph Isn't Tough adult Hebrew series and
Mitkadem: Hebrew for Youth as well as several award-winning children's books. While at URJ, she was also the Managing Editor of
The Torah: Women's commentary, named the National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year in 2008. Rabbi Person is also the co-author of
Stories of Heaven and Earth: Bible Heroes in Contemporary Children's Literature and as well as co-editor of
That You May Live Long: Caring for Your Aging Parents, Caring for Yourself, and Editor of
The Mitzvah Healing. Her essays and poems have been published in various anthologies and journals, including
Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal,
upstreet,
Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture,
Women and Judaism,
The Continuum Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, and
The Women's Haftarah Commentary. Links to her many OpEds are listed below. Rabbi Person lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is the mother of two young adults.
Volume 2:Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz, PhD, earned her doctorate from the department of Rabbinic Literature at Potsdam University in Germany and holds Rabbinic Ordination from Abraham Geiger College in Germany. Prior to joining the Central Conference of American Rabbis as Editor of the CCAR Press, she taught Worship, Liturgy, and Ritual at HUC-JIR in New York, the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University, and in many congregational settings. She has served as a rabbinic intern, adjunct rabbi, and cantorial soloist for congregations in Germany, Switzerland, Israel and the US. Not surprisingly, she loves to write poetry,
midrashim, and prayers. Her work has been published in
Liturgy, Worship, the
CCAR Journal, and in a number if anthologies. She is the author of
Food and Fear: Metaphors of Bodies and Spaces in the Stories of Destruction.
