J Street Speakers Bureau

J Street is pleased to present the J Street Speakers Bureau. This cadre of J Street leaders and friends boasts an exceptional wealth of knowledge and expertise on a wide array of issue areas. They are available to partake in speaking engagements on behalf of J Street. If you are interested in booking a speaker or would like more information, please fill out our Speakers Bureau Request Form.

Kenneth Bob

Ken Bob Headshot

Kenneth Bob serves as the national president of Ameinu, a progressive Zionist organization, as well as chair of Project Rozana USA which focuses on building bridges of understanding between Israelis and Palestinians through healthcare. He is a member of the Jewish Agency for Israel Board of Governors Executive Committee, as well as the Board of Directors of the Forward Association and J Street, and speaks widely on topics of interest regarding Israel and the Jewish community.

Kenneth Bob is an experienced software entrepreneur and strategic business development executive, navigating the corporate process from start-up to public offering. Utilizing this experience and background, he is currently providing management consulting services to small and medium-sized companies.

Location: Plainview, NY

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Israeli society and politics
  • Palestinian society and politics
  • American Jewish community
  • American politics
  • Antisemitism
  • BDS
  • Progressive Zionism

Larry Garber

Larry Garber is an independent consultant with more than 35 years of experience working on issues relating to international development, democratic elections, and human rights. Larry was a senior official with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for 15 years, including five years as mission director for USAID/West Bank-Gaza (1999-2004). From 2004-2009, he was the Chief Executive Officer at the New Israel Fund and, more recently, has worked as an adviser to The Carter Center and other non-governmental organizations.

Larry has published on a wide range of subjects and has taught at several leading U.S. universities. He has observed elections in more than 30 countries, including the Palestinian presidential (2005), legislative (2006), and municipal (2022) elections. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Task Force on Election Crises, and sits on the Boards of Friends of Givat Haviva and Election Reformers Network.

Location: Chevy Chase, MD

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Palestinian society and politics
  • American politics
  • US assistance in the West Bank and Gaza

Cantor Evan Kent

Evan Kent currently lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Before making aliyah, Evan was the cantor at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles for 25 years. Evan received his cantorial ordination from HUC-JIR and subsequently earned a doctorate in music education from Boston University.

Cantor Kent is currently one of the co-chairs for the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial cabinet.

Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli society and politics
  • American Jewish community
  • Israeli/Palestinian culture
  • Implications for advancing peace

Rabbi Michael Rose Knopf

Rabbi Michael Rose Knopf is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth-El in Richmond, Virginia. He was named one of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis” by ‘Forward’. Passionate about social justice and building an inclusive community, Rabbi Knopf is a leading Jewish advocate for multifaith collaboration and human rights. He is the author of ‘Thirty Days of Liberation: Pathways to Personal and Social Transformation Inspired by the Book of Exodus’, the editor of ‘No Time for Neutrality: American Rabbinic Voices from an Era of Upheaval’, and the host of the podcast ‘PopTorah’.

Location: Richmond, VA

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • In-person: out of state  (Travel costs at the expense of event host)
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • American Jewish community
  • American politics
  • Antisemitism
  • BDS
  • Judaism and social justice
  • Judaism and human rights
  • The Jewish case for progressive Zionism

Rabbi Ron Kronish

Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish is an independent scholar, writer, blogger, lecturer, teacher and mentor. For the past several years, he has been a Library Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. From 1991-2015, he served as the Founder and Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), which was Israel’s premier interreligious institution during those years. He was educated at Brandeis University (BA), Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the editor of Coexistence and Reconciliation in Israel: Voices for Interreligious Dialogue (Paulist Press, 2015) and the author of The Other Peace Process: Interreligious Dialogue, A View from Jerusalem, (Hamilton Books 2017).

He currently teaches courses about Interreligious Dialogue and Peacebuilding at the Schechter Institutes for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, in the Department for Adult Education and for the Drew University Theological School (via zoom) in Madison, NJ.

He writes a regular blog for The Times of Israel https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/ron-kronish/ and is a contributor to The Jerusalem Report. In addition, has just completed writing a new book on peacebuilders in Israel and Palestine entitled Profiles in Peace.  He has lived in Jerusalem, Israel, for the past 43 years with his wife Amy. They are the proud parents of three married daughters, and 6 wonderful grandchildren. More information about Rabbi Kronish can be found on his website: https://www.ronkronish.com/

Location: Jerusalem, Israel and New York City, NY

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • In-person: out of state (willing to incur travel expenses)
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Palestinian society and politics
  • American politics
  • US assistance in the West Bank and Gaza

Rabbi Andrea London

Rabbi Andrea London is a nationally recognized leader who has served Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, IL since 2000 and as the congregation’s Senior Rabbi since July 2010. She is a vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, served as a co-chair of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs’ Jewish Muslim Community Building Initiative in the Chicago area, and is a leader in interfaith relations and activism locally and nationally. She is also on the board of Partners for Progressive Israel and co-chair of the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet. She has been involved in peace and justice activism in Israel-Palestine for more than 30 years and lived in Israel for three years. Last year, during a three-month sabbatical in Israel-Palestine, she spent time with Israeli and Palestinian activists seeing the situation on the ground and learning about their efforts to end the occupation.

In 2014 she was named by The Forward newspaper as one of America’s most inspiring rabbis for her work on racial equity.

Location: Evanston, IL

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • American Jewish community

Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva

Rabbi Dr. Rachel S. Mikva serves as the Herman E. Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies, Interim Academic Dean, and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary. The Institute and the Seminary work at the cutting edge of theological education, training religious leaders who can build bridges across cultural and religious differences for the critical work of social transformation. With a passion for justice and academic expertise in the history of scriptural interpretation, Rabbi Mikva’s courses and publications address a range of Jewish and comparative studies, with a special interest in the intersections of sacred texts, culture and ethics. Her most recent book is Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Beacon, 2020), and she is working on a textbook for graduate and undergraduate students, Interreligious Studies: An Introduction, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

She regularly leads study tours to Israel and Palestine, meeting with activists, and her long-standing efforts to fight for justice, democracy and peace are documented in the American Jewish Peace Archive.

Location: Chicago, IL

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Judaism and Social Justice
  • American politics
  • Antisemitism
  • BDS

Rabbi John L. Rosove

Rabbi John L. Rosove is Senior Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles, is a national co-chair of the Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet of J Street, the immediate past national chairman of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA), and is a member of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Israel and Reform Zionism Committee.

He is the author of two books: “Why Judaism Matters — Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Millennial Generation” and “Why Israel [and its Future] Matters — Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Millennial Generation” — both with afterword by his sons Daniel and David Rosove. John translated and edited the Hebrew biography of his Great-Granduncle entitled “Avraham Shapira – Veteran of the Haganah and Hebrew Guard” by Getzel Kressel (publ. by the Municipality of Petach Tikvah, 1955). The translation was privately published (May 5, 2021).

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • American Jewish community
  • Antisemitism
  • BDS

Rabbi Eric Solomon

Rabbi Eric Solomon graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland in 1994 and then entered rabbinical school, spending three years in Jerusalem and three years in New York City. In Israel, he studied Rabbinic Literature at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies and the Shalom Hartman Institute, and completed the Senior Educators program at the Hebrew University. After Rabbi Solomon’s ordination from Hebrew Union College in 2000, he was selected as the 4th Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinical Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (BJ). In 2005, Rabbi Solomon gained entry into the Rabbinical Assembly and arrived in Raleigh to serve Beth Meyer Synagogue that same year.

Rabbi Solomon currently serves as the Vice Chair of the City of Raleigh Mayor’s Commission For Compassion and as a member of the City of Raleigh Human Relations Commission. He has traveled on service missions with the American Jewish World Service as a Global Justice Fellow, developed his spiritual practice with teachers from the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and holds the title of Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He also has served as the co-chair of T’ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights. He has been a member of J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet for many years.

Rabbi Solomon loves playing tennis and is an avid runner. He is married to Rabbi Dr. Jennifer Solomon, Founding Director of the Libi Eir Community Mikveh and co-rabbi at Beth Meyer, and has three children.

Location: Raleigh, NC

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • American Jewish community
  • Antisemitism
  • How To Talk About Israel In A Diverse Congregation

Dr. Howard Sumka

Howard Sumka is a member of the Steering Committee of the J Street DC Metro Chapter and National Leadership Circle. He retired as a Minister Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). From 2006-2010, he was based in Tel Aviv as director of USAID’s Mission to the West Bank and Gaza. During that period, USAID programs to support Palestinian economic development and state building as elements of the Middle East peace process exceeded $1.6 billion.

He was director of the USAID Mission to Albania during and after the Kosovo crisis from 1998 to 2002, and to the Mission in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina from 2002-2006. He also served with USAID in East Africa from 1989-95. Following his retirement, he was the CEO of the OneVoice Movement in 2011-2012. He is a member of the board of the American Friends of the Parents Circle-Families Forum. Dr. Sumka holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina. Among other service honors, he received the President’s Distinguished Service Award and the USAID Administrator’s Distinguished Career Award.

Location: Silver Spring, MD

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • In-person: out of state  (Travel costs at the expense of event host)
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Palestinian society and politics
  • American politics

Rabbi David A. Teutsch

Rabbi Teutsch was the founding director of the Center for Jewish Ethics of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is a widely known author and organizational consultant. He served as president of RRC from 1993 to 2002, following appointments as executive vice president and dean of admissions. Rabbi Teutsch edited the award-winning three-volume series, A Guide to Jewish Practice from the Reconstructionist Press. He is also the author of Making a Difference: A Guide to Jewish Leadership and Not-for-Profit Management (2009) and Spiritual Community: The Power to Restore Hope, Community and Joy (Jewish Lights, 2005). He is the editor-in-chief of the groundbreaking seven-volume Kol Haneshamah prayer book series (Reconstructionist Press, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001) and of Imagining the Jewish Future (SUNY Press, 1992). Rabbi Teutsch served as the executive director of the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot. He is a past president of the Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics and of the Society of Jewish Ethics. He holds honorary degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College, and Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. A graduate of Harvard University, Rabbi Teutsch received his Master of Hebrew Letters and rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City and earned his Ph.D. at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where his work focused on organizational ethics.

Rabbi Teutsch is currently one of the co-chairs for the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial cabinet.

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Availability: 

  • In-person: local
  • In-person: out of state  (Travel costs at the expense of event host)
  • Virtual

Topic areas:

  • Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  • Israeli society and politics
  • American Jewish community
  • American politics
  • Antisemitism
  • BDS