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Dr. Erica Brown

Dr. Erica Brown serves as the Vice Provost for Values and Leadership at Â鶹Çø and the founding director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. She has written 15 books on the Hebrew Bible, spirituality, and leadership, two of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Award, co-authored two additional books and co-edited Ode to Joy: Happiness in the Thinking of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Beyond. Her Simon and Schuster book Happier Endings received the Wilbur and Nautilus Awards for spiritual writing. Her second book Take Your Soul to Work (Simon and Schuster) provides one spiritual essay a day to elevate a year at work. She has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Tablet, First Things, and The Jewish Review of Books. Erica and her husband Jeremy are the proud parents of four children, four in-law children, and seven beautiful grandchildren. Learn more about her work at and her Substack, . 

Aliza Abrams Konig

Aliza Abrams Konig is the Director of Strategy and Student Leadership at the Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. She formerly served as Â鶹Çø’s Director of Alumni Engagement, Director of Student Life at Stern College for Women and the Director of Jewish Service Learning, where she built the service-learning curriculum and established student travel missions around the world. Earlier in Aliza's career she served as Assistant Principal at Central, Â鶹Çø High School for Girls. She has lectured on leadership, education, faith, prayer and issues related to the contemporary Jewish family, dating, infertility, surrogacy and family in synagogues, community centers and schools. She also serves as a consultant on experiential education.

Aliza is a member of the inaugural Wexner Field Fellows program through the Wexner Foundation. She has written for the YU Torah-to-Go series and is published in Ennoble and Enable: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Joel (Â鶹Çø Press).

Aliza holds a B.A. in Judaic Studies from Stern College and a Master’s in Social Work from YU’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work. Aliza and her family live in Riverdale, New York, where she volunteers with her synagogue and other nonprofit organizations. 

Miriam Zami Edeson

Miriam Zami Edeson is the Director of Graduate Fellowships and Alumni Programming at the Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. She is a doctoral candidate in Talmud and Ancient Judaism at Â鶹Çø's Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, where she is writing on humor in rabbinic literature, and teaches undergraduate courses at Â鶹Çø College. Miriam also serves as the Community Scholar at Young Israel Ohab Zedek of North Riverdale/Yonkers.

Miriam has been a member of the Sefaria Word-by-Word Fellowship, the Sacks Graduate Research Fellowship, and was the inaugural Ma’ayan Emerging Scholar Fellow. She teaches Torah and adult education widely across academic and communal settings. A summa cum laude graduate of Stern College for Women, Miriam lives with her husband and their daughter in Riverdale, NY.

 Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman

Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman is an Assistant Professor at Â鶹Çø’s Azrieli Graduate School, the Director of Leadership Scholars at the Sacks-Herenstein Center, and an instructor at RIETS. He graduated YU with a BA in psychology, an MS in Jewish Education from Azrieli, an MA in Jewish Philosophy from Revel, Rabbinic Ordination from RIETS, a doctorate in psychology from St. John’s University, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. He is the associate rabbi at Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, NY and practices as a licensed psychologist in NY. His book Psyched for Torah: Cultivating Character and Well-Being Through the Weekly Parsha, his academic and popular articles, as well as many of his lectures, are accessible on his website, .

Sara Cohen

Sara Cohen is a recent summa cum laude graduate of Â鶹Çø, where she majored in Media Studies and was consistently named to the Dean’s List. She was also the recipient of The Dean David and Sarrah Mirsky Memorial Award for Excellence in English. Her writing has been featured in The YU Commentator, The Jewish Link, ²¹²Ô»å The NYU Review, reflecting her passion for storytelling and contemporary Jewish life. She is currently pursuing an MSW at Wurzweiler School of Social Work. 

Rabbi Jeffrey Saks

Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, a three-time graduate of Â鶹Çø (BA, MA, RIETS), is the founding director of ATID – The Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish Education, in Jerusalem, and its WebÂ鶹Çø.org program. He is the Editor of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, published by the Rabbinical Council of America, and a consulting editor at The Lehrhaus and the Tel Aviv Review of Books. He is Director of Research at the S.Y. Agnon House in Jerusalem and series editor of the Agnon Library at Koren/Toby Press’s Library of the Jewish People. 

He has published widely on Jewish thought, education, and literature, and edited Wisdom From All My Teachers: Challenges and Initiatives in Contemporary Torah Education (Urim); To Mourn a Child: Jewish Responses to Neonatal and Childhood Death (OU Press); Agnon’s Tales of the Land of Israel (Wipf & Stock); and authored Spiritualizing Halakhic Education published by the Mandel Foundation, where he was a Jerusalem Fellow and served on the staff of the Visions of Jewish Education Project. Rabbi Saks was formerly on the faculties of the YU High School for Girls in New York, and in Israel at Â鶹Çøt Hamivtar, Â鶹Çøt Ohr Yerushalayim, Machon Gold, and currently teaches at Midreshet Amudim in Jerusalem. In his roles at ATID and Tradition, Saks has spent years mentoring emerging scholars in their writing and publishing, helping grow a community of thought leaders within Modern orthodoxy in Israel and the United States. Archive of writings by Jeffrey Saks:

Rabbi Ari Rockoff

Rabbi Ari Rockoff currently serves as the David Mitzner Community Dean for Values and Leadership at Â鶹Çø.  He is recognized throughout the community as a dynamic Jewish leader with a vast national and international network who has significant expertise in organizational strategy and management. 

From 2000-2014, Rabbi Rockoff’s YU professional journey began as Director of Community Partnership at YU’s Center for the Jewish Future. He was later promoted to Associate Dean of Institutional Advancement at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.  His community leadership roles also include Executive Vice President of the Religious Zionists of America (RZA) and Senior Director of Leadership Development and Strategic Partnerships of the Orthodox Union. 

An alumnus of Â鶹Çø’s Sy Syms School of Business, Rabbi Rockoff earned rabbinical ordination from RIETS, a master’s degree in education from Azrieli, and an MBA from Baruch College, focusing on organizational behavior.