Professor Stern is President of the Jewish People Policy Institute and a full professor in the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University. He is an alumnus of the Kerem B’Yavneh hesder yeshiva (1973-1978); holds a law degree (summa cum laude) from Bar-Ilan University (1982), and a doctorate in corporate law from Harvard University (1986).

Stern has served as dean of Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Law (1994-1998), and was a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute (1989-2000). For a decade he served as the IDI’s Vice President for Research.

His areas of expertise are corporate law (merger and acquisitions, corporate finance and corporate governance), and public law (constitutional law, religion and state, human rights, law and halacha or Jewish law). He has lectured and been a visiting scholar at universities abroad (including Harvard, Columbia, Brandeis, and Princeton), and was Distinguished University Professor at Monash University in Australia (2009-2011).

Stern has served as advisor to the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee; has participated in numerous committees and public entities, among them the Commission of Inquiry on the Treatment of Residents of Gush Katif (2009); the National Committee for Civic Studies (2009-2011, committee chair); the Takana Forum for the prevention of sexual harassment in the religious community (founding member); the Government Committee for Equality in the Burden of Service (2012); the Committee for Regulating Governance in Higher Education (2014). He has served on the boards of multiple companies, including (currently) that of Bank Leumi.

Stern has been awarded the Zeltner Prize for Excellence in Legal Research (2009), and the Gorny Prize for Outstanding Activity in Public Law (2012).

Professor Stern has written and edited over twenty books; has published over fifty research articles in five languages; is the coeditor (with Professor Sagi) of the journal Democratic Culture (19 volumes to date); regularly publishes essays and articles in the Israeli and international press, and is interviewed by the Israeli and international media on issues of law and society, religion and state, Judaism and democracy, Jewish identity and Israeli culture.

Born in England (1955), married to Dr. Karen Friedman-Stern, father of eight.

Dr. Shuki Friedman is the Vice President of the Jewish People Policy Institute. He is a member of the Faculty of Law at the Peres Academic Center and formerly served as secretary of the Locker Committee for Examining the Defense Budget. He was also chairman of the government committee on the sanctions against Iran, and headed the international and foreign law department for the legal division of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
Areas of expertise

The relationship of religion and state; processes of religionization; secular-religious-ultra-Orthodox relations; ultra-Orthodox employment; the defense budget; Islamic law; international law; the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

Ita Alcalay worked at the Finance Minister’s Bureau for over 3 years with Prof. Yaacov Ne’eman and Dan Meridor. From 1990-1995 she worked with Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, and served at the Foreign Ministry from 1987 until 1993. She has a B.A in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University.

Dr. Haim Zicherman, a senior lecturer at the Ono Academic College (OAC), is an expert in constitutional and property law and also researches the ultra-Orthodox society.

His book Black Blue-White (Yedioth Books, 2014) takes a broad-minded approach to understanding the ultra-Orthodox society in Israel. Until last year, Zicherman managed the ultra-Orthodox campuses of the OAC, where thousands of Haredi students – male and female – study. In recent years, Zicherman has coordinated the development and management of the “Israeli Identity” course available to all undergraduate students in Israel.

Noa Israeli is the coordinator of the academic course “Israeli Identity: Divided We Stand.” She is a PhD student at the School of Jewish Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a graduate of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Human Rights and Judaism Program. Israeli is the Director of the Scholarships Program for Outstanding Teaching Students at Tel Aviv University, and lecturer in the Regav program at the Kibbutzim Seminar. She lives in Tel Aviv and is the mother of two daughters.

Gabriel Abensour grew up in France and made Aliyah in 2011. Gabriel is a PhD student in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a President’s Fellow at the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. His research lies at the intersection of Mizrahi studies, Jewish Law, and History. Gabriel earned his MA and a multidisciplinary bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Hebrew University where he was a student in the Amirim Interdisciplinary Honors Program in the Humanities. For the last two years, Gabriel worked as Research Assistant in the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Chen and their son Peli.

Shmuel Rosner is a Tel Aviv based columnist, editor and think tank fellow.

He is a fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI);
He is the non-fiction Editor for Israel’s largest Publishing House, Kinneret-Zmora-Bitan-Dvir;
He is Senior Political Editor for the Jewish Journal, and he writes the popular blog Rosner’s Domain;
He writes a weekly column for The International Herald Tribune \ New York Times and for Israel’s Maariv Daily.

Rosner was previously a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, and was Chief U.S. Correspondent, Head of the News Division and Head of the Features Division for the Israeli daily Haaretz. He wrote for many magazines, including Slate, Foreign Policy, Commentary, The New Republic, The Jewish Review of Books, and others.

Rosner’s book “Shtetl Bagel Baseball, on the Wonderful Dreadful State of American Jews” was published in Israel by Keter (Hebrew, 2011) and became a bestseller.

Ambassador Avi Gil Served as the Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from April 2001-November 2002. He also served as Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Regional Cooperation, Deputy Director-General of the Peres Center for Peace; the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Media Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Finance, and Executive Policy Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has been closely involved in Israel’s policy-making and peace efforts, including the negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan. He is a Senior Fellow at the JPPPI and a was a close advisor to President Shimon Peres.

John S. Ruskay came to UJA-Federation in 1993 and held several positions before being appointed Executive Vice President and CEO in October 1999, serving in this role until July 2014. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1968, Dr. Ruskay earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at Columbia University. He served as Educational Director of the 92nd Street Y from 1980 to 1985, and Vice Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America from 1985 to 1993.

Dr. Ruskay has written extensively and speaks nationally on how the American Jewish community can most effectively respond to the challenges and opportunities of living in an open society; the critical role of Jewish philanthropy; and the central role of community. He has served as a senior consultant to the Wexner Foundation and The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, and has chaired the Publication Committee of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service and the Professional Advisory Committee of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program.

Dr. Ruskay has received numerous honors, including the Bernard Reisman Award for Professional Excellence from Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program, the Mandelkorn Distinguished Service Award from the Jewish Communal Service Association of North America, and honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary (2011), Hebrew Union College (2103), and Yeshiva University (2014).

The Ruskay Institute for Jewish Professional Leadership is being established to provide in-service professional enrichment for the next generation of communal leaders.
Dr. Ruskay is married to Robin Bernstein; together they have five children and seven grandchildren.

Senior Fellow at JPPI, Dov Maimon leads the “Grand Strategy toward Islam” project, the “Israel-Diaspora New Paradigm” project and the Institute’s activities in Europe.

Among his action-oriented work, he is a member of the Advisory Committee for Improving access to Ultra-Orthodox to Higher Education chaired by Professor Manuel Trajtenberg. He is also the author of the Action Plan for bringing the developing mass migration of French Jews to Israel. Commissioned by governmental agencies, the plan was adopted by the Israeli Cabinet on June 22nd 2014.

Born in Paris, he earned a B.Sc. from the Technion (Haifa, Israel), a MBA from Insead (Fontainebleau, France), a M.A in Religious Anthropology and a Ph.D. in Islamic and Medieval Studies from the Sorbonne University. He is a laureate of the prestigious prize “Grand Prix du chancelier des universites 2005” awarded to the best French PhD work in Literature and Human Sciences. He is also a graduat of the Mandel School of Educational Leadership. Formerly an High-Tech industry entrepreneur, Dov is teaching at the School of Business Administration of the Ben Gurion University.

STEVEN W. POPPER, (Ph.D., Economics, UC Berkeley, 1985; B.S. summa cum laude, Biochemistry, U of Minnesota, 1976) is a RAND Senior Economist and Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He is also director of RAND’s Israel Initiative. He has published research on the economics of innovation — particularly how organizations both public and private identify and incorporate technological change. He led RAND’s first Summer Institute, a week-long workshop on science, technology and U.S. economic competitiveness. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Associate Director of RAND’s Science and Technology Policy Institute (S&TPI.) He provided research and analytic support to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies of the executive branch. His work included projects on the economic and social returns to basic research, assessing critical technologies (including principal authorship of the Fourth U.S. National Critical Technologies Review,) policy analyses of national innovation systems, evaluations of federal R&D portfolios relevant to the Global War on Terror, determining the S&T capabilities required for a prospective Department of Homeland Security, technical barriers to international trade (for the National Institute of Standards and Technology,) federal R&D portfolio decisionmaking (for the National Science Board and the World Bank,) and Presidential transition documents on S&T issues of national importance.

Dr. Popper is currently leading projects on better integration of technology assessment into transportation planning for the Transportation Research Board and has recently competed studies on energy strategy in Israel and science and technology-based economic development in Mexico City. He has now begun a new project to work with Israel’s police on domestic policing issues. He was active in founding projects of the RAND Pardee Center for Longer-Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition. This included co-authorship of the flagship study, Shaping the Next Hundred Years, which provides a new methodological framework for decision making under profound uncertainty that has been applied to an increasing set of policy issues. In particular, he has advised doctoral dissertations applying these concepts to issues in R&D planning and S&T policy. Dr. Popper has conducted research for, and has served as consultant to, several non-U.S. governments as well as multilateral international organizations such as OECD and the World Bank on issues of technology planning, industrial restructuring, and regional economic development. Prior to joining RAND he worked as a researcher in physical chemistry and enzymology, as Country Account Officer for Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia at Bank of America, and as consultant to the World Bank on issues of industrial restructuring in East Europe. He has also been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a member of the AAAS Policy Council representing the Industrial Science and Technology section, and is a Charter Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

S.Wald was born in 1936 in Milan, Italy. He grew up in Basel, Switzerland where he studied social sciences, history, and history of religions, graduating in 1962 as Ph.D. In 1964 he joined the Paris-based OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) where he stayed until his retirement in 2001. His career spanned education, technological innovation, science and technology policy, energy research policy and biotechnology policy. He was Head of the OECD/DSTI Biotechnology Unit. He joined the JPPPI in 2002 and worked on Jewish/Israeli relations with China; science and technology; and the history of Jewish civilization. Currently he reviews India-Israel-Jewish People links.

Three Reports written for JPPPI:
– China and the Jewish People – Old Civilizations in a New Era, Jerusalem 2004.
– “Science and Technology and the Jewish People”, JPPPI Annual Assessment 2005, Jerusalem 2005.
– Jewish Civilization at the Crossroads – Lessons from the History of Rise and Decline, to appear in 2010.

Three Research Papers written outside JPPPI:
– “China and Israel”, Encyclopedia Judaica, Second Edition, ed. Fred Skolnik, Vol. 4, Farmington Hills, 2007.
– “The ‘Confucianisation’ of the Jewish Community of Kaifeng: Jewish and Non-Jewish Historical Perspectives”, The Jews in Asia – Comparative Perspectives, ed. Pan Guang, Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai, The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 2007.
– “Chinese Jews in European Thought”, Youtai – Presence and Perception of Jews and Judaism in China, ed. Peter Kupfer, FASK, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, ed. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, 2008.

Dr. Shlomo Fischer teaches sociology in the School of Education at Hebrew University and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.He is also currently a research fellow at the Van Leer Institute. His research interests include the nexus of religion, politics and class in Israel, contemporary religion and the sociology of the Jewish people. He has published extensively on radical religious Zionism and the West Bank settlers as well as on the Shas movement.

Fischer has worked in the field of education for the past 25 years. In the past 10 years he has worked in the field of religion, democracy and tolerance. He has edited (together with Adam Seligman) The Burden of Tolerance: Religious Traditions and the Challenge of Pluralism (Hebrew; HaKibbutz Hameuchad and the Van Leer Institute, 2007) which addresses these issues. From 1996-2007 he was the founder and Executive Director of Yesodot – Center for Torah and Democracy which works to advance education for democracy in the State-Religious school sector in Israel and was also one of the founders and is on the Board of the International Summer School for Religion and Public Life which is based in Boston, Mass. He is a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem.

Noah Slepkov is a fellow and chief technology officer at JPPI and he is lead developer and managing partner at theMadad.com.

At JPPI he is focused on public opinion surveys and big data research.

Previously he served as Foreign Policy and Strategic Advisor to Member of Knesset Dr. Einat Wilf and worked in the Israeli Knesset as a Parliamentary Assistant.

Noah holds an Honors BA in Jewish Studies from York University and an MA in Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution from the Lauder School of Government at the IDC Herzliya. He also studied Economics at the University of Toronto and Political Science at the University of Western Ontario.

Prior to immigrating to Israel from Canada in 2008, Noah worked on campuses across Canada organizing Jewish student events and leading Israel advocacy efforts.

Dan Feferman recently completed his service with the IDF at the rank of major. For nearly a decade Dan served as a foreign policy and national security analyst and advisor to the General Staff, focusing on US-Israel strategic relations, as a special assistant to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, and as a commander in an elite intelligence unit within the IDF’s Research and Analysis Division, where he continues to serve in reserve duty. Through his various positions, Dan has been closely involved in Israel’s most pressing strategic defense and political issues.

Dan also consults, lectures and writes on foreign policy, defense and intelligence matters .

Prior to his military service, Dan completed an MA in National Security Studies from Tel Aviv University and a BA in International Politics and Middle East Studies from the School of International Service, at the American University, Washington DC, both with honors. Dan also completed a prestigious internship at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Dr. Gitit Levy-Paz is a fellow at JPPI. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Bar-Ilan University, an M.A. in Hebrew Literature from Ben Gurion University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Communication from Bar-Ilan University. Her work focuses on contemporary Jewish American identity from an interdisciplinary – sociological, political and literary – viewpoint. In addition to her work at the JPPI, she is a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University.

Gitit was selected as a research fellow for the Israel Democracy Institute’s program on Judaism and Human Rights and has received several other fellowships. She worked as a literary editor and wrote literary criticism for the literary section of Haaretz.

Sharon Shilo was born and bred in South Africa. She is a graduate of the Habonim Dror Youth Movement.  Formerly she worked at the S.A. Zionist Federation, the Israel Trade Centre, and S A Board of Jewish Education.   Sharon is married with two children and 6 grandchildren.