Director: Rabbi Ari Weiss

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Rabbi Ari Weiss is currently the Director of Uri L’Tzedek. Prior to joining the Uri L’Tzedek leadership team, he was Co-Director of the Meorot University Fellowship and served on the Judaic Studies Faculty of the Heschel School. In the summer of 2006, Rabbi Weiss was a JCUA Rabbinical Student Fellow and interned at We The People Media, a Chicago based public housing advocacy group. He has served as a Jewish educator for American Jewish World Service, Bnei Akiva, and the Lauder Foundation on missions to Nicaragua, Ghana, Israel, and Hungary. 

Rabbi Weiss received his rabbinical ordination from YCT Rabbinical School in June 2007. He is completing a Master's degree in Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University where he completed his undergraduate work in philosophy and religion. He has studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and Beit Morasha of Jerusalem.

Founder & President: Shmuly Yanklowitz

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Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L’Tzedek, a rabbinical student, a Wexner Fellow, and a doctoral candidate. He studied at the University of Texas as an undergraduate and Harvard University for a Masters in Leadership and Psychology, and he completed a second Masters degree in Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University. He is now a Doctoral candidate at Columbia University in Moral Development and Epistemology, and has taught as an instructor of Moral Philosophy at Barnard College. Shmuly is now in his final year of Rabbinical School at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) in New York prior to which he studied Talmud and Jewish law at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat, Israel for two years.

As a global social justice educator, Shmuly has volunteered, taught, and staffed missions in many countries including Israel, Ghana, India, France, Thailand, El Salvador, Senegal, Germany, and Ukraine. Shmuly currently teaches philosophy in the early mornings at in inner-city school in Harlem and serves on the New York Department of Health’s Office of Minority Health Clergy Steering Committee. Shmuly worked in business consulting for a top 10 firm, has written numerous articles on Jewish and social justice issues, and has lectured and consulted across the world. He has served as a rabbinic intern in four different congregations in Montreal, Connecticut, Boston, and Florida and taught as a scholar-in-residence for over 20 organizations. He served on the International Board of Hillel for two years and is the former Director of Panim’s Leadership and Activism training (JAM) in Washington D.C.

A film crew followed Shmuly for over a year to produce a PBS documentary (“The Calling”) about the training of religious leadership to be released in 2010. In 2008, the Jewish Week recognized Shmuly as one of “36 under 36” (one of 36 of the most influential Jewish leaders under the age of 36). In 2009, the UJC named Shmuly one of five “Jewish Community Heroes.”

 
Board Member, Co-Founder: Ari Hart (In Israel 2009-2010)

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Ari Hart is a co-founder of Uri L'Tzedek and rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. A leader of several initiatives that bring together Orthodoxy, the Jewish community, and the world at large to make positive change, Ari launched Or Tzedek, the Teen Institute for Social Justice, served on multiple community boards and social justice organizations, and has taught at schools, synagogues, and summer camps around the country. He also served as a Nadiv Social Justice Fellow for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and as Court Appointed Special Advocate for neglected and abused children in Cook County. Ari was recently selected by the Jewish Week as one of the 36 under 36, a list of "forward-thinking young people who are helping to remake the Jewish community," and his work bringing the Hispanic and Jewish communities of Northern Manhattan together was profiled by the Jerusalem Post. Ari learned at Yeshivat HaKotel, Machon Pardes, and graduated from Grinnell College in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in music theory and composition.




Board Member

Dr. Emilie S. Passow, having completed her BA from the City College of New York, magna cum laude, graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She then received her MA and Ph.D. in English Literature with Honors at Columbia University. She has taught a wide range of literature and writing courses as well as workshops in many academic venues including Haverford College and Swarthmore College, where she taught for 12 years, and the University of Pennsylvania in the English Department of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Wharton School of Business, the Graduate School of Education, and the Annenberg Graduate School of Communication, and Gratz College, in both the Florence Melton Program and the Gratz Graduate Program i n Jewish Studies.
 
Most recently, Dr. Passow’ s professional interests focus on two areas: Medical Humanities and Jewish Studies. Through grants from The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and the Templeton Foundation as well as support from the Dean of Jefferson Medical College, Dr. Passow has been a Visiting Scholar in Medical Humanities at Thomas Jefferson University, where she also has been on the Task Force on Professionalism and an observer on the Thomas Jefferson Hospital Ethics Committee. In addition, she has given Medical Humanities Grand Rounds at all the major medical institutions throughout the Philadelphia area.
 
Since September 2004, Dr. Passow is the Director of the Certificate Program in Medical Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences of Drexel University, where she is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy and the Judaic Studies Program.
 
Dr. Passow also lectures widely on Medical Humanities as well as on Jewish bioethics, Biblical narrative, and American Jewish writers. She is a member of the Arts- Medicine Division at the College of Physicians and the Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium, and is also  a Research Associate for the Transcending Trauma Project at the Penn Council for Relationships. This project explores patterns of resilience, communication, and Jewish continuity in Holocaust survivor testimonies.



Board Member

Evan Farber is currently employed as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he has represented major financial institutions and other corporations in a variety of complex litigation and white collar and regulatory investigations.  He graduated in 1999 from Yale University with Distinction in Religious Studies, and in 2003 from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.  Evan has also clerked for Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York and for Judge Robert S. Smith of the New York Court of Appeals.
 
Evan has provided pro bono counsel to several synagogues and other Jewish institutions.  He has served on the Board of Directors of Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, where he had previously completed a year-long fellowship, and of his shul, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan's Upper East Side.  Evan has also volunteered for other organizations, including the Unemployment Action Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, and the Anti-Defamation League.