Staff

Hazzan Diana Brewer was ordained through the ALEPH Ordination Program, where she now assists the Cantorial Program and student affairs. She is on the faculty of the Davennen’ Leadership Training Institute (DLTI) and serves as hazzan at the Jewish Community of Amherst in Massachusetts, leading Shabbat, weekday, and High Holy Day services. Also finding joy in teaching, she tutors individuals in voice and hazzanut, and works with B’nei Mitzvah students. She came to hazzanut from an active professional life in Early Music performance as a singer and string player. She earned her Master of Music at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA.

photo courtesy of MileChai Studios

Rabbi Diane Elliot, based in the Bay Area, is a spiritual teacher, ritual leader, dancer, writer, and somatic therapist who inspires her students to become clearer channels for Presence through awareness and movement practices, dance, chant, and nuanced interpretations of Jewish sacred text. For six years she directed ALEPH’s Embodying Spirit, En-spiriting Body training program, and she continues to work to bring the essential wisdom of the Jewish path to diverse Jewish and interfaith groups.

Shefa received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l. She is the director of C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice, and was named “One of the 33 Most Inspiring Rabbis in America,” by the Jewish Forward. Her latest project is called SOULIFT, a one week immersion in spiritual practice designed to lift us into the Soul perspective. Shefa combines her grounding in Judaism with a background in Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Native American spiritual traditions to make her uniquely qualified as a spiritual bridge celebrating the shared path of devotion.

Satya Levine brings more than a decade of experience working for educational nonprofits with missions ranging from lifelong learning for older adults, to Jewish afterschool education, to qigong and Ren Xue life cultivation practices. Prior to that, she lived in Israel for a full shemitah cycle (seven years) where she studied Torah and worked for several English language publishers. She is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she currently resides amidst the oaks, bays, and redwoods with her rescue pup Luna, the scrub jays and woodpeckers, and so many other marvelous critters.

Rabbi Natan Margalit was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He received rabbinic ordination at The Jerusalem Seminary in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Talmud from U.C. Berkeley in 2001. He has taught at Bard College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. Rabbi Natan is Founder of Organic Torah, a non-profit which fosters holistic thinking about Judaism, environment and society. Natan is a member of the Va’ad (steering committee and core faculty) of the ALEPH Ordination Program. He lives in Newton, MA, with his wife, Ilana, and their two sons.

Nailia is a passionate marketing specialist with a decade of campaign management expertise and a global perspective in constructing marketing engines from inception. With a background in the publishing industry, she learned from bestselling authors, as well as provided consultation to non-profit academic institutions, including the Graduate Institute of Holistic Studies and The Pocket Project under the leadership of Thomas Huebl. Nailia is recognized for innovative marketing growth strategies and for delivering award-winning designs to clients spanning North America and Australia. Her dedication to honing the craft of content production and community management, alongside creating original work, remains unwavering. Nailia’s graphic design work earned her a gold medal for book cover design in 2018, while her co-authored published journal in the arts garnered national recognition in 2010. She also designed livestreaming and social campaigns for Dr. Lisa Rankin, Marianne Williamson, and acclaimed author and publisher, Joanne Fedler.

Rabbi Marcia Prager, MFA, MHL, D.Min.h.c., is the founding Dean of the ALEPH Ordination Program. She serves as Director of the AOP Rabbinic Program where she also teaches Jewish spiritual practice and the Jewish Lifecycle Training sequence of courses and practica. She co-directs and teaches in the prize-winning Davvenen’ Leadership Training Institute, and serves as rabbi of the P’nai Or Jewish Renewal Congregation of Philadelphia, PA. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and also received personal smicha from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l. She is the author of The Path of Blessing, a contemporary hasidic text exploring the Jewish practice of blessing, published by Bell Tower and later by Jewish Lights, and has created the P’nai Or Siddurim for Shabbat and other innovative compilations of prayer and liturgy. In 2010, she was selected by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the Top Fifty American Female Rabbis.

Charles “Chuck” Silverstein, PhD, is currently an ALEPH Board member, Treasurer, and Chair of the Finance and Governance Committees and is serving on the IBG. After retiring from a successful career as a fixed-income institutional investor, he earned an MA in Conscious Evolution and a PhD in Transformative Studies at the California Institute for Integral Studies. He is the former Executive Vice President at The Graduate Institute of Holistic Studies where he was also the Academic Director of the MA program in Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Psychology. His experience at the school included founding and directing a spiritual coaching program, accreditation oversight, as well as finance and IT oversight. Since the late 1990s, Chuck has been steeped
in the traditions and practices of the Jewish Renewal movement. He attended retreats at Elat Chayyim, and has attended all Kallah and Ruach Ha’Aretz gatherings since 2013. He has completed the Nondual Kabbalistic Healing 4-year program and the Age-ing to Sage-ing Legacy program.

Rabbi Daniel Siegel was the Rabbinic Director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal from 1997-2004, Director of Spiritual Resources, Associate Dean of the Ordination Programs, and Chair of the Rabbinic Studies department until the summer of 2015, and taught the senior rabbinical students for many years . He is the founding Rabbinic Director of ALEPH Canada and of the Integral Halachah Institute. Reb Daniel is the editor of ALEPH’s Siddur Kol Koreh project and numerous teachings of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.