Julie Weinberg-Connors, Director of Outreach & Communications
Julie is a part-time Yeshiva bochur, full time community organizer. They love to sit at the crossroads of Torah, queerness, and anti-occupation work. They first came to community organizing through Unitarian Universalist youth conferences in New England, where they discovered feminism, punk rock, and anarchist and socialist thought. While pursuing their B.A. in Critical Identity Studies and Religious Studies at Beloit College, they co-founded Students for an Inclusive Campus (SIC), an organization that works for racial justice for marginalized students. Julie’s academic area of study focused on the intersection of race, sexuality, and gender- culminating with their honors thesis on the Jewish American Princess stereotype. During Julie’s semester abroad at Tel Aviv University they studied Israeli and Palestinian Culture and Politics. After doing Achvat Amim in the fall of 2017 and moving to Jerusalem, they spent two years in Yeshiva. Julie co-founded Ya’aseh Mishpat, an anti-occupation collective of Torah learners. They are also a long time member of All That’s Left: Anti-Occupation Collective. In their free time, you can find Julie watching The Bachelorette and making their way through their massive library.
Jonathan Hefetz, Program Director
Jonathan is an educator and activist raised in Jerusalem. He holds a degree in World History from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with an emphasis on revolution and struggles for justice. His path as an educator and activist was informed by his experiences in the peace movement "Seeds of Peace" as a teen, which he remains active in to this day. Jonathan recently returned to Jerusalem after six years abroad. During those years away, he was the National Director of Hashomer Hatzair France, Co-Director of Education and Development at The International School for Peace for Refugees in Greece, and was the Youth and Young Adults Director for the Reform movement in the UK. Jonathan is a co-founder of "Al Fikre", an initiative for Jewish-Arab Cultural Partnership. When he's not fighting the man, you can find Jonathan on the basketball court, playing ultimate frisbee, or taking photographs.
Elianna Boswell, Education Director
Elianna is an activist-artist-educator who believes in finding creativity in activism, structure in art, and passion and play in education. Born and raised in the deserts and mountains of the southwest United States, she is a nature enthusiast and aspiring water-color-landscapist. She earned her BA in History at Yale where she specialized in colonial and post-colonial histories and the liberation movements of the 20th century. Now completing her MA in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa, Elianna believes that understanding the past helps us grow and transform, individually and collectively, and empowers us to be better partners to ourselves and others in the ongoing work of co-resistance and solidarity. At various points before joining Achvat, Elianna received her foundation in community-organizing through J Street U, co-directed an experimental theater collective, performed Chekhov in the original at the Art Theatre School in Moscow, worked for the New Israel Fund in New York City, and studied the body, trauma, and Jewish approaches to meditation and healing as a Dorot fellow. When she is not reading about the politics of genocide commemoration or facilitating workshops on power, powerlessness, and identity, you can find her drinking tea on her porch or curling up to indulge in the showstopping delights of the Great British Bake Off.
emet ezell, Development Coordinator
emet wants to understand the relationship between ancestral grief and collective imagination.for emet, the key to this wisdom is transformative justice and devotional attention. emet initially began organizing with United We Dream, fighting for immigration justice in Texas. emet was trained through JOIN’s Jewish Organizing Fellowship and helped to jump-start Never Again Action. emet is a poet, a libra sun, and an aquarius rising. their poetry recently won the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and their manuscript, between every bird, our bones, will be published by Newfound Press in the fall of 2022.
Rabbi Rachel "Bluth" Rosenbluth, Ruchani Founder
Rachel "Bluth" Rosenbluth is a spiritual seeker, community organizer, permaculture enthusiast, and niggun singer. Growing up in Canada, and now living in Israel, she is dedicated to building meaningful, spiritual and sustainable Jewish communities. She just completed learning halachah, gamara and chassidis in Jerusalem at Beit Midrash Har’el, Yakar and Simchat Shlomo. She leads Kabbalat Shabbat on the beach in Tel Aviv and brings people together for spirited Jewish gatherings around the globe. Bluth created this Jewish spiritual component of Achvat Amim. Graduating from McGill University with a double major in Environment and Development as well as Buddhist studies, she worked as the Director of Education for Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs in Toronto. She has studied at Pardes, Mechon Hadar and Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Studies. She has had valuable experiences doing environmental field research in East Africa, and volunteering on sustainable farms in Israel and in Kenya, where she bolstered an interest in spiritual, personal and community development. Bluth hopes to learn deep Torah, explore the world, and share Judaism as a path of mindful and joyous Avodah and tikkun. L’chaim!
Achvat Amim's Founders
Karen Isaacs, Co-Founder
Karen is the co-founder and co-director of Solidarity of Nations - Achvat Amim. She is an educator, community organizer, and serial creator of new frameworks that empower people to take action from a place of meaningful engagement with Jewish identity. In her organizing work she is focused on building partnership between diverse communities through mutual learning and solidarity with a focus on creative non-violent direct action that meets the needs of communities and is rooted in a positive and aspirational vision of self-determination for all peoples in the place they call home. Karen has coordinated the adult movement of Hashomer Hatzair in North America, led community-based exchanges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth in Canada with the Candian Roots Exchange, facilitated groups in Bina - the secular yeshiva in South Tel Aviv, and has most recently focused on building Achvat Amim as a dynamic educational platform for hands on work with educational, community, and human rights organizations, doing grassroots work with Israelis and Palestinians in and around Jerusalem. Karen is also a co-founder of This is Not An Ulpan/Mush Fussha. She has a degree in Sustainable Development from The New School, and has also studied at McGill University.
Daniel Roth, Co-Founder
Daniel is the co-founder and co-director of Solidarity of Nations - Achvat Amim. He is an educator, group facilitator, and community organizer who has been working to establish participatory communities rooted in education and action for more than two decades. As a leader in the Hashomer Hatzair movement, both growing up in Toronto and living in a kvutza (commune) in Brooklyn, he's built and led critical education and justice-centered programs with youth and adults in North America, Europe, and the Middle East with a multitude of organizations primarily aiming to work with young Jewish activists, educators, and leaders. Daniel's work in Achvat Amim has primarily focused on developing vibrant movement spaces to connect people with work in leading Israeli and Palestinian human rights projects and to empower participants to take active roles in the development of their learning processes with the aim of building a powerful movement for equality and self-determination for all peoples in the place they call home. Daniel is also a co-founder and learner with the critical education language co-operative, This is Not an Ulpan/MushFussha and has worked as a print and television journalist and producer. He holds an MA in Education, Community, and Social Change and is a writer, photographer and avid coffee drinker.
