Our Board

PRESIDENT

Cynthia (Cindy) Greenberg (she/her) has been so delighted to find mishpukhe, community, and a spiritual home at our beloved Kolot for 20+ years. She was honored to serve three previous terms as Kolot’s President (2009/5769-2015/5776), and has been involved in numerous congregational teams, including our membership, anti-racism, fundraising, safety, capacity-building, leadership development, and founding rabbinic transition efforts. An organizer and activist, she works as a consultant and strategist in the progressive sector. Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace are her alma maters and longtime Jewish political homes, and she lives in Flatbush. Contact President@KolotChayeinu.org.

VICE PRESIDENT

Laura Wernick has been a member of Kolot since 2012, and an occasional visitor at Kolot since the late 1990s. They are thrilled to be a part of a community where they can bring together their traditions, politics, and spirituality, and where their multiracial, multi-faith family is affirmed and embraced. They are a member of the White Anti-Racist Affinity group, and their son attends the Children’s Learning Program. Laura is an associate professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service and life-long organizer and activist. They have been active in Jews for Racial and Economic Justice for 30 years, where they have engaged in leadership roles in many campaigns, including the New York Caring Majority. Laura sits on the national steering committee of Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, has engaged in Palestine solidarity activism since the late 1980s, and has worked as an organizer of LGBTQ+ youth. Laura is dedicated to supporting Kolot in becoming an anti-racist congregation.

TREASURER

Peter Rich and his family have been members of Kolot since 2011. He is a founding partner at a CPA firm formed in 2005. His work there includes numerous clients in the nonprofit world. These clients run the gamut from arts organizations to social justice entities. He previously worked for an international aid NGO and for various CPA firms. 

He grew up in a traditional suburban Reform synagogue and is so happy to have found Kolot with its social justice orientation. His wife, Allegra Fishel, is a civil rights attorney, and his daughter attended CLP through her Bat Mitzvah, where they were pleased that she received a strong foundation in both observance and social justice.

SECRETARY

Elana Lancaster joined Kolot in 2015 after attending services and events starting in 2011 and realizing how grateful he was to have found a welcoming Jewish community that’s committed to justice, engaged with tradition, and where people grapple deeply with the values and questions that are important to them. He works as a curriculum developer, workshop facilitator, and technical assistance consultant specializing in transgender health and inclusion, and sexual and reproductive health. He's also a storyteller who hosts the monthly show Take Two Storytelling and teaches workshops on storytelling as a tool for art, activism, and community advocacy.

MEMBER-AT-LARGE

Rebecca Vilkomerson has been a member of Kolot since she moved to Brooklyn in 2009. She was thrilled to find Kolot, a place where she could bring her full political and spiritual self and be surrounded by a warm community dedicated to building a better world. Her commitment to Kolot has only deepened over the years, and she currently is on the Shamas team! Both of her daughters went through the CLP. After 10 years as the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rebecca is currently working as an independent consultant and is excited to bring her organizational development, strategic planning, and organizing skills to the Board.

Yonii Bock was raised in Brooklyn and has lived in CT, MD, and AL, as well as in Windham, ME, where she currently resides with her 5-year-old son Oliver. Yonii has been a member of Kolot since 1994, when, at the age of four, she and her mother became two of Kolot’s very early “Shabbat regulars.” She began talking about becoming Bat Mitzvah at the age of 6. Over time, Yonii has established meaningful multi-generational relationships and deep friendships with members of the community, clergy, Board members, and staff. She has been an active participant in the Member Engagement Committee and the Race Working Group. She was instrumental in the start of the Knitting Circle, seeing it as an opportunity for members to connect, regardless of the fact that she cannot knit a stitch! As a young single mother and “Lash Artist” raised in our community, she has always brought her diversity of opinion, along with her extraordinary gift of laughter, to our table, reaching and enriching us.

Sally Charnow has been an active member of Kolot since 2003 and a fellow traveller since the beginning. A Professor of Modern European, Postcolonial History, and Women’s Studies at Hofstra University, she brings together her interdisciplinary training in Performance Studies and History writing on issues related to cultural production, art and politics, and minority subcultures in modern France and beyond. She is the author of Theatre, Politics and Markets in Fin-de-Siècle Paris: Staging Modernity (Palgrave, 2005), Edmond Fleg and Jewish Minority Culture in Twentieth-Century France (Routledge, UK, 2021), editor of The Great War and Artistic Expressions, A Hundred Years On (Peter Lang, 2021). Her articles and reviews have appeared in the collected volume Revising Dreyfus: Art and Law (Brill, 2014) and Europe through the Eyes of the Other (Wilfred Laurier, 2013), Radical History Review, American Historical Review, French History, Modern and Contemporary France, and H-France. Along with family and work, nurturing vibrant communal Jewish life has been a mainstay of her life.

BC Craig has been a social studies teacher and teacher educator in New York City for more than 30 years. As an activist, BC has been fighting for economic, social, and racial justice with groups such as ACT UP, JFREJ, and Rise and Resist, mostly through the organization of protests and as a trainer of nonviolent civil disobedience. BC has been a member of Kolot with Ruth Finkelstein since 1994, when they joined the first adult B’nai Mitzvah class. Following several years of study with Rabbi Lippmann, BC converted to Judaism in 1996.

Barbara Gross has been a member of Kolot since we had Shabbat services in a circle in the balcony at Gethsemene. In her experience, no other synagogue is as truly committed to action for social justice, to the full participation of all that are willing, and in recent years, to racial justice. She has worked as a community and education justice organizer, trainer, and TA provider, and, through that work, has gained experience in organization building, leadership development, facilitation, supervision of staff, and occasional proposal writing. She hopes to bring her ever-evolving understanding of race and racism and what it means to be white in a racist system, continuing to build upon the work of the Race Working Group as we strive to be an anti-racist congregation. For those of us who are white: What we have inherited, benefit from, and internalized is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to change our ways of being in our synagogue, city, and world.

Audrie King (she/her) grew up attending a faux progressive United Methodist Church. She fell in love with Kolot when she attended High Holiday services in 2014 and knew she had found something special when she first heard Rabbi Lippmann say, “Doubt can be an act of faith, and all hands are needed to build our community.” She became a member in 2015 and converted following study with Rabbi Davis and Rabbi Rubin at Central Synagogue in Manhattan.

Audrie is a queer neurodivergent femme navigating chronic illness and invisible disability. She was raised in a working class family in rural upstate New York and currently lives in Brooklyn with her partner, their dog, and many plants. Audrie’s career has revolved around advocacy, politics, and public health, focusing on LGBTQ+ health, reproductive justice, and health equity. Currently, she is a policy director working at the intersections of public policy and sexual health within NYC government, where she has also worked on three emergency public health responses, including COVID-19. Audrie is passionate about centering disability justice and anti-racism work in all that she does.

Autumn Leonard (she/they) inherited a love of equality from her parents, who braved laws against interracial marriage and got legally hitched in 1960. Her love of storytelling began when she was 8 years old and accidentally stumbled into a stage debut at the Edinburgh Fringe. That combination of justice and story has infused her work ever since.

Autumn has been leading racial and social justice trainings since 2001. A mother of two, Autumn believes avidly in the importance of play in education, that liberation begins in our bodies, and that you're never too young or too old to start talking and taking action about race! She applies playfulness and progressive education techniques to leading workshops and conversations for parents and kids about race, using yoga and mindfulness techniques through Body Get Free.

Autumn is a former chair of the Race Task Force at Kolot and previous Kolot K'tanim Early Childhood teacher. Autumn is a member of the Jewish Women of Color Resilience Circle, an Elder member of the Jew of Color Caucus at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and a core member of the Black Jewish Liberation Collective.

Autumn is a RYT 500 yoga teacher who graduated with a BA in Theater Studies at Yale and holds an MFA in Film from UT Austin. Autumn is an anti-racism trainer and facilitator with Body Get Free and the founder of Angry Momma Yoga, and teaches in NYC schools through the Urban Yoga Foundation.

Jessica Roff (she/her) was born and raised in so-called Brooklyn, occupied Lenape territory. She is a climate and environmental activist who has fought to ban fracking in New York State, to stop fossil fuel infrastructure build-out, and to support environmental justice and climate justice work. In her past life, Jessica practiced Federal Indian law in Washington, D.C. before moving back to Brooklyn. She has been involved to varying degrees with Kolot since 1993, though she didn't live in NYC for about half of that time. Jessica is a member of the Israel/Palestine Working Group, the White Anti-Racist Affinity Group, and the Race Working Group, and was a member of the Social Justice Committee and of Planet A that moved Kolot to divest from Chase Bank because of its fossil fuel investments and in solidarity with the Standing Rock Water Protectors. Jessica has always felt drawn to Kolot because of its commitment to social justice, which is core to her Jewish identity. And its commitment to music and food. She is an avid baker and cook and loves riding her bike whenever possible.

Dana J. Schneider has been engaged in building progressive Jewish communities since high school, and has been a part of the beloved Kolot community for over 20 years. She's grateful for a congregation that welcomes everyone to show up as our full selves, and has served Kolot in various capacities over the years: as a member of the fundraising committee, as a High Holy Day coordinator, and as a consultant. As a parent since 2019, Dana is especially grateful for Kolot as a place for Jewish families of all kinds. Her professional work has always been in nonprofit fundraising, event planning, and organizational development (in the Jewish, arts and culture, and social change sectors), and she is excited to get to help continue to build and grow Kolot. Born and bred in Brooklyn, Dana lives with her wife Kathleen, their daughter Esperanza, and their elderly chihuahua mix Kaylee in Canarsie.

Kolot has always been my spiritual home since I was converted by Rabbi Ellen in 2007 and then bar mitzvah'd in 2010. I have always been active in social justice, gay liberation, and anti-racism movements, dating from my high school years in the early 1970s. I was raised in East Orange, N.J., and then moved to Boston, where I met my husband in 1979. We have been together now for 45 years (!!), married since 2004. While living on Cape Cod for a decade (2011-2021), I was actively engaged and on the board of a local Havurah, Am Ha-Yam. Professionally, I have been a hair stylist for 46 years and owned a shop in the West Village for 13 of those years. I am excited to have returned to New York and to be actively engaged with Kolot and “giving back to the community.”

Nancy Workman (she/her) is honored to share in and serve this deeply caring and uniquely open-minded community, which she joined in 2009. As a licensed psychologist who works with children, adolescents, and families at New York City Health + Hospitals/Kings County, and as a former Bank Street-trained special education teacher who continues to teach and write, Nancy feels committed to helping to “repair the world” by supporting people as they find their voices, tell their stories, and take their places at the “welcome table.” At home and in her family, this “table” includes a Grammy Award-winning audio engineer and a software engineer.