The Board of Trustees meets at 6:45p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Kehilla members are welcome to attend our meetings. Find out how to join us on the Kehilla events calendar.
The Kehilla Board has started a Listening Protocol, in which congregants and/or committees can share with Board Members items that you would like us to know or consider. Submit to the Listening Protocol form here.
Meet the Kehilla Board
Dan Alpert, Treasurer
Dan grew up wanting to either be a teacher or else the next Johnny Carson. He went to Northwestern as a Radio-TV-Film major. But after a falteringly short career in broadcasting realized that education was his true calling. Dan started as a teacher and moved into school administration culminating in becoming president of a small two-year postsecondary School outside Philadelphia for nearly two decades.
While in Philadelphia, he attended congregation Mishkan Shalom and reconnected to a progressive Judaism he could finally relate to. When his wife Laura and he decided to move to Berkeley to be close to family, people at Mishkan told them they “absolutely must attend Kehilla.” They’ve been members for about a decade now. Dan has served on Kehilla’s Finance Committee for several years, recently shepherding the congregation’s mortgage refinance as well as its participation in the Payroll Protection Program which helped Kehilla weather the storm of the pandemic. Dan is active with Kehilla’s Immigration Committee as well where he has served on 4 accompaniment teams assisting immigrants as they try to build their lives in America.
Outside of Kehilla, he volunteers with Consider the Homeless where every few weeks Laura and he make enough soup to feed about 120 hungry people. He continues his “seemingly-still-fledgling-even-after-5-years effort” to learn Spanish, and spends time in a community garden.
Dina Burg
Dina hails from Los Angeles where she grew up attending public schools and local beaches. She was an active member at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the first girl in her family to become a B’nei Mitzvah. After attending college in San Diego, she moved to Oakland, which she thought would be a temporary lay-over until a big move to SF. Once she experienced Oakland’s beauty and rich diversity, this is where her heart remained.
Dina attended her first Kehilla service in 1990, then housed in a little church in West Berkeley. She sang in High Holiday services with the Women’s Chorus and enjoyed the spiritual and communal aspects of Kehilla membership. After brief stints in Los Angeles and Chicago, Dina returned to Oakland and Kehilla for good. She lives here with her husband, Alex, and daughter, Ruby.
Professionally, Dina has worked with children and families for over 30 years as an educator and advocate, in both the public and private sectors. As an attorney, she has practiced family law exclusively for nearly 20 years. Dina was raised in a home where volunteering in your community was encouraged, and she is excited and honored to have an opportunity to serve on the Kehilla Board.
Hillary Brooks
Jaime Jenett, Co-Chair
While Jaime didn’t grow up in a Jewish household, in her mid 20’s she learned her great grandfather, Henry Jenett, was, in fact, a Polish Jew, originally named Henry Jacobson. Since learning about her heritage, Jaime began to explore her Jewish identity and strengthen her connection to Jewish community, including actively engaging with Kehilla for the past 10+ years. Jaime is on the Kehilla Health and Safety Task Force and Arc of Change Youth Education Committee. She and her wife, Laura Fitch, have an autistic son named Simon who attended Joyfully Jewish and was welcomed and celebrated at Kehilla School.
Jaime grew up in Palo Alto, graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a B.A. in Religion and UNC Chapel Hill with a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in Maternal and Child Health. She now works for Contra Costa Health Services Health, Housing and Homeless Services as their Community Engagement Specialist and has extensive experience with strategic planning, systems change, community process and public speaking. Her identities include cis gender, femme lesbian, anti-racist, parent of a child with special needs, public servant and goofball.
Joel Kleinman
Joel grew up in Los Angeles in a mixed family with secular and Jewish traditions. He attended Hebrew school there and became a bar mitzvah at age 13. Joel moved to San Francisco in 1996 to complete his BA at SFSU, then moved to Berkeley a few years later, where he still lives with his newly wed spouse in a blended family of five, plus an extremely active border collie.
He became connected with Kehilla through the school and B’nei Mitzvah program for his children beginning in 2016 and discovered the radiance of the Jewish community here. The open-minded, progressive nature of the leaders and congregation became a spiritual home to his family as they navigated the challenges of blending together.
When not working as a research strategist, Joel is active in the youth sports community, coaching high school baseball and Little League. Joel is also an avid meditator in the Vipassana tradition and attends silent retreats regularly.
Justyn Lezin
Justyn is a lifelong resident of the Bay Area, if you don’t count that she lived elsewhere from ages 4 through 24. She feels like she and her family slowly found Kehilla despite numerous glowing recommendations from friends, and the relationship deepened considerably when her child started attending Kehilla school in 2015. Justyn is a current member of the Generosity Committee and Chevra Kadisha, and is grateful to be able to give and receive support from this very special and eponymic community, aka Kehilla. Justyn is a lawyer and recovering litigator who worked successively as a public defender, legal aid attorney representing domestic violence survivors, and, since 2011, in private practice as a family law attorney with a particular emphasis in mediation, consulting, and working with LGBTQ families. As part of deriving great comfort from ever-evolving Jewish traditions, Justyn cares deeply about issues of social, racial, and environmental justice, and feels fortunate to be part of a “community that reaches for joy, shared liberation, and justice, rooted in Jewish spiritual teachings and practice.”
Lia Barrow
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Lia earned a Bachelor of Humanities in Anthropology, Architecture, and French from Carnegie Mellon University, then headed to San Francisco in 1999 to start a family. When her first child was born in 2005 she dedicated herself to deepening her Shabbat practice and found a spiritual refuge at Kehilla Community Synagogue in 2006. She was warmly welcomed home by Rabbi Emeritus David Cooper into the Kehilla community.
Lia is passionately dedicated to social justice. In recent years she worked as a Legal Secretary at the Law Offices of Paul Rein, where she served as a personal assistant to the disability rights attorney. While her children attended Yu Ming Charter School, Lia was elected by parents to represent minority viewpoints about race, class, and gender identity as a co-chair of the Cultural Competency Committee at the Chinese Language immersion elementary school.
Her volunteering at Kehilla began with offering sit-down meals for kiddush after Fireside Shabbat Services. Lia’s contributions to the community have extended over the years to include active support of Kehilla School, participation in Kehilla’s BIPOC Congress, DEIB Committee, and Organizational Development Committee, and delivering drashot at Jewish Holidays.
As a proud mother of two, her love and dedication to her family further fuel her determination to create lasting change in her community.
**The Kehilla Board has started a Listening Protocol, in which congregants and/or committees can share with Board Members items that you would like us to know or consider. Submit to the Listening Protocol form here.
Michael Myers, Co-Chair
Michael grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and came to California in 1986 to attend Stanford University. After graduation, he moved to Oakland where he has lived ever since. Michael works at TECHsperience, the organization he started in 1995, which provides IT and MIS services to Bay Area non-profits. Prior to TECHsperience, he worked for a San Francisco non-profit as the lead on a training and advocacy project focused on improving the educational opportunities for children experiencing homelessness. He then served as the lead case manager for an East Bay organization where he provided counseling and case management services for adults with mental health and drug and alcohol issues as they transitioned back into permanent housing. Michael married his wife, Sarah Carnochan, in 1998. Sarah is the director of the Bay Area Social Services Consortium at the UCBerkeley School of Social Welfare. Their daughter, Anna, was born in 2003 and is a sophomore at UC Davis. Michael and Sarah attended High Holidays at Kehilla over the years and officially joined the congregation around 2012. Anna attended religious school at Kehilla, had her Bat Mitzvah in 2016, and was a member of JYCA. Michael provides occasional IT consultation to Kehilla, worked with Kehilla as it re-engaged with its use of Salesforce, is a member of the Budget Priorities group, co-chair of the Finance Committee, and co-chair of the Board.
Nina Rennert Cohen, Secretary
Nina Rennert Cohen grew up in Northern New Jersey and attended Workman’s Circle Sunday School for her childhood Jewish education. By way of Washington, DC; Rouen, France; and Palo Alto, California, Nina finally settled in Berkeley in 2002 and joined Kehilla in 2016 when she and her husband, Jonathan, were in search of Jewish schooling for their sons. It was Rabbi Dev’s open heart and mind that sealed the deal for Nina who was initially a reluctant Jew.
Inspired by the quality education her son was receiving at Kehilla and interested in developing her own Jewish identity separate from her husband’s and sons’, Nina started taking classes with Sharon, Bracha, Rabbi Dev, Hazzan Shulamit, and Rabbi Chaya and was slated to have her own adult bat mitzvah on March, 21, 2020 in partnership with fellow Board Member, Ali Cannon; though the pandemic thwarted those plans, Nina offered a drash on Zoom that day – the first Zoom Shabbat Service.
Nina is delighted to join the Board and the Personnel Committee and hopes to offer her experience as a career educator – teacher and principal – and business owner to the community as she, in turn, learns and listens to Kehilla’s thoughtful community members, staff, and clergy.
Rachael Reiley
Rachael Reiley (She/Her/They/Them-Its complicated) is an almost native San Franciscan having moved to the city in the summer of love (1971). She grew up in Diamond Heights and the Castro, then “left home” to attend Mills College then returned and earned a JD at USF. In the late-1980’s she discovered the Jewish community of Sha’ar Zahav which is where she first met and studied with Rabbi Dev. In 2001 she married Emily Newfield, and their son Riley was born in 2006. When he was a few weeks old the family moved to Cambridge MA where Emily completed an ob-gyn residency.
Upon returning to the Bay Area they quickly found Kehilla where Riley attended the school and Bnei Mitzvah program. Riley loved his time at Kehilla school and Rachael loved sitting on the sofas with the Thursday afternoon Torah study whenever she could. Rachael has also enjoyed the opportunity to study with the Kehilla community at 700 Benches, the Kehilla retreats, and Svara, among other adult learning opportunities.
During the pandemic Rachael has been at her computer pursuing a Masters in Library Science through San Jose State University. She has a deep passion for middle grade and YA literature that she will talk about endlessly if you let her.
Rachael is excited to serve with such a vibrant leadership team at Kehilla this year.
Ron Glass
I am 75 years old; father of three (my two older kids, Hannah, and Daniel, were B’Nai Mitzvah with/in Kehilla, and Dan is now head of Brandeis School of SF, and son Ben’s ceremony was in Arizona were we lived at the time); grandfather of seven ages ~ 2-15); I am recently semi-retired as a ‘kind of historico-cultural-political-psychoanalyst’ and philosopher of education. I grew up committed to Jewishness as a way of life seeking justice and truth, and have always tried to live that way.
I’ve been ‘part’ of Kehilla ever since; I served on the initial elected Board for some years and led the crafting of the first formal agreements between the Board, congregation, and Rabbi Burt. I also helped lead early work on Jewish-Black matters and Kehilla’s first two interracial and interfaith seders. I moved away from Berkeley for 24 years for work but remained connected with my Kehilla chavurah and attended High Holidays the majority of my years away. I returned to Berkeley at the start of the Covid pandemic.
I thankfully am spending more time with my family as my work commitments slow down. My spiritual practices in family and as a parent/grandparent has always been central in my life. I have also been spending more time this past six months or so in Kehilla spaces again and volunteering in the office with administrative tasks, and I think I can find ways to be helpful with the Board and community in this particular moment. I am ready to serve as needed and able.
Stephanie Hochman
Stephanie has been involved with Kehilla since 1977! Coming to the Bay Area as a college student, she was immediately drawn to Kehilla’s commitment to social justice and political activism combined with spiritual depth. She knew this was the place for her to land for her Jewish community. She strengthened her relationship with Kehilla when her son entered Hebrew school in Kindergarten (he is now almost 21 years old) and post bar mitzvah, joined the B’nei Mitzvah Committee and organized a short-lived teen program.
Stephanie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and is the East Bay Director of a large youth and family-serving non-profit, managing both organizational and clinical realms. In addition, she is a strategic planning facilitator and trainer. Stephanie is moved and inspired by the place that Kehilla holds in the community and the impact that we have. Stephanie looks forward to bringing her organizational skills and other passions to the Kehilla board, joining with others to create and repair the world. When Stephanie isn’t working and volunteering, she spends time with loving family and dear friends, reading, cooking, eating, walking, and whiling away hours cracking British-style cryptic crossword puzzles. Stephanie’s excitement in joining the board was realized and enhanced by the camaraderie, intelligence and levity she experienced at her first board meeting.
Victoria Alcoset
Victoria’s Ashkenazi family are poor and working class Jews in Southern California, her Latineh family a blend of US and Mexicaneh indigenous. A first generation college graduate (on both sides), she came up to Northern California for the education, but stayed for the food and communities of political advocacy.
Learning Jewish rituals in college that her secular family did not observe, Victoria found Kehilla right away. A year later she celebrated an adult b’mitzvah in Kehilla’s first adult cohort, probably the first one in the family in two generations. Temporarily disabled at the time for two years, she began to learn organizing from amazing friends in the disabled community, advocating for themselves as the Disability Justice movement formed.
Over the decades Victoria has volunteered in various areas of the congregation: Kehilla School, Spiritual Life Practices Council, Economic Justice Committee, and most recently on the DEIB Team and its BIPOC Congress. She’s joining the Board now to give back once more to this congregation that has been a home away from home for so long.
Other loves of Victoria’s include mentoring niblings in her family, teaching patients holistic health as a Doctor of Ayurveda, and pursuing mysticism as an avocation and in her work as a Spiritual Director.