Presenters - R

Organisation: Limmud NY
Website: http://www.limmudny.org

Karen Radkowsky is the founding president of Limmud NY, which will hold its fourth annual conference this January 17-21. An avid Limmudnik since 2000, she has advised Limmuds in LA, Moscow, Atlanta and Buenos Aires. In her spare time, Karen is the director of customer research at Ogilvy New York.

Sessions:

• Adapting Limmud Around the Globe: Issues and Challenges to Consider

Website: http://www.rachelrosereid.com

RRR has developed a style of storytelling and song for adult audiences at venues and festivals including the Tricycle Theatre, BAC, Festival at the Edge and Beyond the Border. She is the UK's Young Storyteller of the Year and a resident of London's new Jewish community hub 'The House'.

Sessions:

• Jew in the Woods
• The Curious Life and Gravity-Defying Torah of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berdichev

Daniel Reisel is a medical student at the Royal Free and UCL. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from Oxford and his BA in Theology and Religious Studies from Cambridge. Daniel has been Programming Co-Chair of Limmud Conference and LimmudFest, and currently serves as Vice Chair (Education) of the Jewish human rights group Rene Cassin.

Sessions:

• A Brief History of Chutzpah
• God After Darwin
• Origin of Human Rights
• Tell me Text
• Tzeitel's Tzurres, Hodel's Muddle, Chava's Palaver

Since 2005 Haviv Rettig has been The Jerusalem Post’s Jewish world correspondent, covering organised Jewish communities worldwide on issues including demographics, identity, anti-Semitism, education and communal politics. Formerly the Post's Tel Aviv and education correspondent, he dealt with Israel's contentious education budget and Israel-NATO relations. He was the Post's chief correspondent to the Herzliya Conference.

Sessions:

• Maintaining Jewish Identity

No matter where you are from around the world, secular or religious, hippie or yuppie, old or young, something wonderful happens when you experience the music of Reva L'Sheva. Drawing on diverse musical influences, Reva L'Sheva create a heartfelt, unifying, uplifting sound you gotta dance to.

Sessions:

• Musical Journey Through Your Soul - After Hours Soul Connection
• Reva L'Sheva in Concert

Organisation: Noth American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry

Barbara Ribakove Gordon is director of NACOEJ (the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry) and has been in the forefront of the rescue and absorption of Ethiopian Jews since 1981. She lectures internationally on their origins, traditions and their current plight.

Sessions:

• Ethiopian Jews: 'Who Needs Them?' Says the Interior Minister

Organisation: In Harmony

Clive Richards is a GP in Hornsey and the Chairman of New Horizons committee which supports a co-existence project in Jerusalem called CCECH (the Centre for Creativity in Education and Cultural Heritage), that brings Jewish and Arab school communities together.

Sessions:

• In Harmony - a Co-Existence Project

Organisation: In Harmony

Yvonne Richards is the patron of In Harmony, a UK charity that supports a co-existence project in Jerusalem, called The Centre for Creativity in Education and Cultural Heritage, (CCECH) that brings Jewish and Arab school communities together. She is also the Chair of the Rimon Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Group.

Sessions:

• In Harmony - a Co-Existence Project

Organisation: National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail

Marcus Roberts is the founder and director of the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail (JTrails.org.uk). Starting with Oxford in 1990, he has written and led a large number of Jewish heritage trails. He lectures and writes in this field and is a member of the Council of the Jewish Historical Society of England.

Sessions:

• A Virtual Tour of England's Jewish Heritage
• England's Hidden Jewish Heritage and Work of the National Anglo-Jewish Heritage Trail (JTrails)

Organisation: JASH (Jewish Association of Spiritual Healers)
Website: http://www.HealingRoom.org

Susie Robinson is the Scottish member of the Jewish Association of Spiritual Healers, is a hands-on healer and a crystal therapist, healing and teaching worldwide. Once again Conference calls her back to share her wisdom, humour and normality as a buffer against the burgeoning chaos of today’s world. Spirit Works. New Age is Of-Age and it’s here now.

Sessions:

• Circle of Life
• Spiritual Healing - You Too Can Be a Healer

Organisation: Maidenhead Synagogue

Rabbi, writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Romain is minister of Maidenhead Synagogue and has written books on the history of British Jewry and Reform Judaism. He appears on radio and television and is a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle. He is chaplain of the Jewish Police Association.

Sessions:

• God and the Richard Dawkins Delusion
• The Reform Beth Din
• The Second Oldest Profession in the World

Aubrey Rose, the son of immigrants, became adviser to governments and prime ministers. Honoured with OBE, CBE and an Honorary Doctorate, he held significant public, communal and international offices, worked enthusiastically as an environmentalist, lawyer, author, inter-faith leader, human rights activist, gardener, humorist (hopefully) and seeker into the world of the spirit.

Sessions:

• Judaism and Ecology

Organisation: Albright Institute, Jerusalem

Stephen Rosenberg is an architect with a second career in archaeology - he holds a doctorate from University College London and is a Fellow of Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He's the Honorary Secretary of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, the author of 'The Haphtara Cycle' (2000), 'Esther, Ruth, Jonah Deciphered' (2004) and 'Araq al-Amir, a Jewish estate in Hellenistic Jordan' (2006).

Sessions:

• Archaeological Espionage - TE Lawrence and Leonard Woolley in Sinai 1913/14.
• City of David - New Finds, New Problems
• The Exodus, the Pharaohs and Sigmund Freud
• The Real Esther and Haman
• Two Jewish Temples in Ancient Egypt
• Two Jewish temples in Ancient Egypt
• Would You Buy a Cruse of Oil from this High Priest?

Simon Rosenstone is registered blind and has been blind almost from birth. He doesn’t allow his disability to get in the way and one of the things he particularly enjoy is playing Scrabble, which he does with a braille Scrabble set.

Sessions:

• Word for Word - Scrabble Schmabble. Test Your Brain Power

Organisation: A.M.I.

Danny Roth is a member of Israeli rock band Reva L'sheva and part of the founding group of Artists and Musicians for Israel (AMI), a unique educational project that brings Israel to diaspora communities through music and the arts.

Sessions:

• Israeli Drum Workshop

Website: http://www.matthue.com

Matthue Roth is the author of Never Mind the Goldbergs and the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go, as well as the just-released Candy in Action. As a performance poet, he’s filmed for Def Poetry Jam and tours constantly. He lives in Brooklyn and keeps a secret diary at www.matthue.com.

Sessions:

• Jewish Arts Panel
• Matthue Roth in Performance
• Splash Ink on Parchment: Writing About G-d
• Tell me Text
• The Curious Life and Gravity-Defying Torah of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berdichev

Organisation: Jüdischer Kulturverein Berlin e.V.

Irene Runge is a sociologist, the author of books and papers. She's a Jewish activist born in New York to leftwing Jewish-German immigrant parents and raised in East Berlin. In 1986 she founded the Jewish group 'Wir für uns' in East Berlin; and she's the co-founder and president of Jüdische Kulturverein Berlin, is active in Jewish-Muslim dialogue and migration and is a contributor to 'Jüdische Zeitung'.

Sessions:

• Jews in Germany or Jewish Germany?

Organisation: Nephesh Theatre
Website: http://www.nepheshtheatre.co.il

Howard Rypp founded the Nephesh Theatre 30 years ago in Canada and moved it to Israel in 1983. Today Nephesh offers 10 Hebrew plays and 5 English plays in its repertory. Performance of his play 'Gimpel the Fool' at Limmud will employ his vast experience as adaptor, director, producer and actor.

Sessions:

• Drama and the Bible
• Gimpel the Fool
• Gimpel the Fool