High Holiday Leaders & Teachers 2021

Rabbi Julia Andelman, Yossi Hoffman, and Jeremy Tabick, will be our anchor shelichei tzibbur (prayer leaders) for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Dena Weiss, and Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen will be our keynote teachers. Dena will teach on Rosh Hashanah, and Mary Brett will teach on Yom Kippur.

Rabbi Julia Andelman is thrilled to be leading Yom Kippur services at Hadar for the 13th time this year. Julia was the artistic director of Pri Etz Hadar (the Hadar CD) and also recorded The Bedtime Sh'ma, a CD of Hebrew lullabies. She is the Director of Community Engagement at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she oversees adult learning programs across North America, digital learning, continuing rabbinic education, and Prozdor. She previously served as rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zedek, director of adult education and programming at Park Avenue Synagogue, and director of the iEngage Project at the Hartman Institute of North America.

Yossi Hoffman is a current Kehilat Hadar Shamash, and he is excited to be leading services at Hadar for the eighth time. Prior to leading at Kehilat Hadar, Yossi led High Holiday services at NYU's Conservative minyan for three years, and he hopes the many Kehilat Hadar tunes he introduced at NYU have endured beyond his tenure. Yossi loves biking, has a passion for kosher, vegan, and vegetarian restaurants, and photographs his dinner way too often.

Jeremy Tabick is a long-time volunteer for Kehilat Hadar. He is Content Manager at Hadar Institute, where he teaches and curates and edits content—both online and in print—and Project Zug courses. Jeremy is also pursuing a PhD in Talmud at JTS. He graduated from the University of Manchester (in the UK) with a Masters in Physics, and is an alumnus of Yeshivat Hadar and the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Dena Weiss is Rosh Beit Midrash at Hadar Institute, where she teaches Talmud, Midrash and Hasidut. Dena earned a BA in Religious Studies from New York University and an MA in Theology from Harvard Divinity School. She has studied and taught in a variety of Jewish educational settings including Drisha, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and Pardes.

Rabbi Mary Brett Koplen is a Chaplain and Rabbi at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she advocates for the specific religious needs of Jewish patients and accompanies patients of all faiths and no faith through their unique experience of cancer. Mary Brett was ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary and completed her chaplaincy residency at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia and Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York. Mary Brett has taught Torah in a variety of settings including ImmerseNYC, Nishma Beit Midrash, and The Marlene Meyerson JCC of Manhattan. 

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