Viv Anstey is described as a serial social entrepreneur, being the catalyst for numerous start-ups in the SA Jewish scene. She has had a hand in establishing: The Eliot Osrin Leadership Institute (current director), Melton (director), Limmud SA, Jewish Literary Festival, PJ Library, Tikkun, the SA Jewish Museum and Jewish trauma network. She has a Masters in Social Work, a Masters in Jewish Community Service (Hornstein, Brandeis University) and is recipient of numerous local and international awards including the Eric Samson Mendel Kaplan Communal Service Award in 2021. Viv has served as professional consultant on the national SA Jewish Board Of Deputies, and as lay leader on the Cape Council.  She has been an active driver on the CapeTown2040 Vision. Viv has recently been invited to serve on the executive committee of Global Jewry.  Her passion lies in Jewish continuity, community, young leadership, Jewish education and leadership development.  She is married to Gary and has 2 children Dalit, an ESG lawyer and Benji, a music student and musician.

Rabbi Dr. Rachel Sabath Beit Halachmi is an American-Israeli leader, author, and public speaker, and the inaugural senior rabbi at Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation in Baltimore. Ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, Rabbi Sabath also holds a doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She teaches Jewish leaders around the world through the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood.

Dr. Galeet Dardashti is an anthropologist, vocalist, and composer who has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing advocate for Middle Eastern and North African Jewish culture. Her scholarly publications examine Israeli music/media and Mizrahi cultural politics in Israel and the USA; she has held postdoctoral fellowships at NYU and Rutgers, assistant professor positions at JTS and NYU and she will be a Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center in 2024. She is widely known as leader/ founder of the all-woman Sephardi/Mizrahi ensemble Divahn, and through her multi-disciplinary commission, The Naming; her upcoming release, Monajat, (supported by Indiana University, MFJC, and FJC) was released in September, 2023.

Dr. Daniel Fainstein is the dean and a professor of Jewish Studies at the Universidad Hebraica in Mexico City. Dr. Fainstein has been the dean of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary “M.T. Meyer”, director of the Central Council of Jewish Education of the Argentine and a visiting lecturer and advisor in academic and educational institutions in Latin America, Europe, Israel, and the United States. He is also a member of the MFJC Board of Trustees.

Dr. Laura Shaw Frank is the national director of the William Petschek Contemporary Jewish Life Department at American Jewish Committee (AJC). She holds a PhD in Jewish history from the University of Maryland, College Park, and undergraduate and law degrees from Columbia University.

Dr. Eric Goldman is a film historian and educator who lectures and writes on Jewish, Yiddish, and Israeli cinema. He is adjunct professor of cinema at Yeshiva University and instructor at the Streicker Academy for Adult Jewish Learning in New York City. He hosts “Jewish Cinematheque” on the Jewish Broadcasting Service, telecast in the USA and livestreamed across the globe on jbstv.org.

Wendy Kahn is the National Director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, a position she has held for 18 years. The SAJBD is the representative body of SA Jewry, responsible for upholding the community’s civil and religious rights.  She engages with government, political parties, civil society, universities, the media and international Jewry on behalf of the Jewish community. Wendy responds to antisemitic incidents, working with various authorities to ensure that SA retains its relatively low levels of antisemitism. She has been involved in many campaigns building bridges between SA Jewry and the broader South African Society, having spearheaded numerous outreach initiatives uplifting and improving the lives of disadvantaged South Africans. Since Oct 7, Wendy, together with the leadership of the SAJBD have addressed the many challenges facing SA Jewry in the face of an increasingly hostile government. The SA government’s ICJ case and other manifestations of government’s contempt for Israel have had practical implications for local Jewry.  The SAJBD has worked to assist the community in addressing these issues.

Rabbi Dr. Samuel Lebens is a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Haifa, and a dynamic Jewish educator. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Birkbeck College, University of London and has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Notre Dame and Rutgers.

Professor Adam D. Mendelsohn is Director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of Cape Town. The Centre, the only of its kind in Africa, conducts research focused on Jews in southern Africa, past and present. He is the author of Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army (2022) and The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (2014), and co-editor of Jews and the Civil War: A Reader (with Jonathan D. Sarna, 2010), Transnational Traditions: New Perspectives on American Jewish History (with Ava Kahn, 2014), and Yearning to Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded-Age America (with Jonathan D. Sarna, 2022). He has co-curated exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society, Princeton University Art Museum, and the Center for Jewish History, and is a former editor of the journal American Jewish History and currently co-editor of Jewish Historical Studies.

 Dr. Karen Milner is an Associate Professor of Psychology in the School of Human and Community Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She is registered as an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and her teaching and research interests are in the field of employee well-being and mental health at work. Karen has published extensively in the field of health and wellbeing (including mental health) in the work-place in both local and international journals and has spoken at many local and international conferences on this topic. In 2021, she published the book ‘Beyond Tea and Tissues: Protecting and promoting mental health in the workplace’.

In addition to her work at the university, Karen is the elected National Chairperson of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (the representative spokes body for the Jewish community in South Africa). In that role, she has committed herself to fighting all forms of racism and antisemitism in this country.

Dr. Channa Pinchasi is a research fellow at the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought at the Shalom Hartman Institute. In addition, Channa leads and facilitates think tanks at the “Center for Judaism and State Policy.” She initiated and directs “Cheder Mishelach 2.0”, a leadership program for religious feminists.

Professor Menachem Rosensaft was born in 1948 in the Displaced Persons camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, the son of two survivors of the Nazi death and concentration camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Rosensaft is Adjunct Professor of law at Cornell Law School, Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, General Counsel Emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, and a past President of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City. He teaches about the law of genocide and about antisemitism in the courts and in jurisprudence. Most recently, together with the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he launched an initiative for Muslim-Jewish dialogue at the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Bosnia, and he has been featured in numerous major international publications as an outspoken critic of the proceeding brought by South Africa against Israel before the International Court of Justice.

Dr. Steven Windmueller is the emeritus professor of Jewish Communal Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles and is a leading expert on the subject of Jewish politics and the author of several articles, publications, and books, which includes The Quest for Power, a Study in Jewish Political Behavior and Practice published in 2014.

Charisse Zeifert is the Deputy Director, SA Jewish Board of Deputies.  She also heads up communications where she interfaces between the mainstream media and the Jewish community.  This includes taking journalist trips to Israel.  Charisse hosts a weekly show on the Jewish community radio station, Chai FM.  Her show focuses on events happening in the Jewish world.  She holds a MA degree in Anthropology and an MA in museum studies.