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. Rebecca is currently the Co-Director of Funding Freedom. Her book Solidarity is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing, co-authored by Rabbi Alissa Wise, about her years as Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace came out in 2024. She brings 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 they currently reside with their 5-year-old son Oliver. Yonii has been a member of Kolot since 1994, when, at the age of four, they and their mother became two of Kolot’s very early “Shabbat regulars.” They 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. They have been an active participant in the Member Engagement Committee and the Race Working Group. They were instrumental in the start of the Knitting Circle, seeing it as an opportunity for members to connect, regardless of the fact that they themself cannot knit a stitch! As a young single parent and “Lash Artist” raised in our community, they have always brought their diversity of opinion, along with their 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.

Ty Citerman has been a member of the Kolot community in various capacities for 25 years, and a member along with his family (two daughters Carla and Zora, and wife Megan) for about 15. He is a Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer who writes, performs, and teaches music across the spectrum of jazz, rock, and contemporary classical music.

Ty has been leading Jewish music in synagogues for 20 years. He is a founding member of the irreverent chamber jazz quartet Gutbucket; leads the radical Jewish quartet Bop Kabbalah; and writes chamber music that’s been performed by JACK Quartet, Anti-Social Music, Sara Schoenbeck, and Bearthoven. In his secular music life, he has played with the American Composers Orchestra, John Zorn, Ethel, Glenn Branca, Kaoru Watanabe, Frank London, Rhys Chatham, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Brian Chase, and many others. His music appears on Cuneiform Records, Tzadik Records, Cantaloupe Music, Enja, Knitting Factory, NRW, and Gut Records.

Adam Conner-Sax (he/him) has, along with his family, been a member of Kolot since 2012, when he and his wife, Pauline David-Sax (a High Holy Days regular from way back) were married by Cantor Lisa. Being a Kolotnik is Adam’s first experience belonging to a synagogue, and it has been warm, challenging, and wonderful. He was a Torah Study regular for his first couple of years at Kolot and still misses those amazing discussions!

Adam has also co-chaired the Membership Engagement Committee and, more recently, been an enthusiastic member of the Dues Task Force. Adam and Pauline’s younger daughter Sadie has been going to CLP since she was a Torah Tot and will begin Kitah Hay in Fall 2025. Adam trained as a physicist, worked in finance for several years, and has for the past few years worked as a data scientist, both on statistical methods and improving the data landscape around state legislative races. Adam is particularly interested in helping Democratic donors find out-of-state state legislative races where their support would be most useful.

Émilia Decaudin (they/she) first joined Kolot in November of 2023 after making the decision to double-down on Jewish community in the wake of the turmoil of Israel's war on Gaza. She is a longtime activist for housing and for trans rights, has worked to elect countless progressives in New York State, and is a proud member of JFREJ (Jews for Racial & Economic Justice).

Émilia is a systems thinker and a people person; she thrives in situations where she can lend a helping hand by connecting the big picture with individual experience. She applies these principles both in her activist life, as well as at her day job as a data engineer.

Émilia is the daughter of French immigrants and speaks French fluentishly. She lives in Long Island City with her wife Siobhán and her devious cat Morrígan.

Noa Gottlieb is a freelance journalist with nearly two decades of experience in digital media whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Guardian, WIRED, The Verge, Vox, and many other outlets. She was a co-founder of Out of the Binders, a non-profit devoted to advancing the career of women and gender variant writers, and an original member of Gotham Roller Derby.

At the age of 13, she wrote the award-winning play Bring Back My Bonny to Me, a story of queer identity and the generational trauma found in Holocaust survivor families. In her spare time, she serves as a volunteer rape crisis/domestic violence counselor and mentor at the Crime Victims Treatment Center. 

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.

Ayaz Muratoglu (they/he) has been a member of Kolot since they moved to Brooklyn in 2021. They currently work at Adalah Justice Project and are studying Istanbul's Karaite Jewish population. Ayaz is on the Shamas team, served on the Rabbinic Search Committee in 2024-25, and was B-Mitzvah'd at Kolot in 2023.

Dana J. Schneider has been engaged in building progressive Jewish communities since high school, and has been a part of our beloved Kolot community for over 20 years. She's grateful for a congregation that welcomes everyone to show up as their 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 in an interfaith and mixed-race marriage, Dana is especially grateful that Kolot is a place for Jewish families of all kinds. Her professional work for the last several decades has been in nonprofit fundraising, event planning, and organizational development (in the Jewish, arts and culture, and social change sectors), and she is excited to be part of leading Kolot into our next chapter as co-chair of the fundraising committee, with all the challenges and opportunities of this time. Born and bred in Brooklyn, Dana lives with her wife Kathleen and their kids Esperanza and Isidor in Downtown Brooklyn.

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.”

Amy Steingart became a Kolot member in 2009 and was excited to find a place where all varieties of Jewish experience are embraced and welcomed. She is full-time retired. Her career was primarily in technology as a tech writer, trainer, and software support person; she moved into human resources work, including benefits support and retirement counseling. Amy is a poet. She is a Shabbat regular and an occasional drash-er; she was a Shamas for many years. She goes to Kolot Morning Blessings regularly and has found a deeper spiritual connection and an incredibly caring community there. "I grew up with a minimal sense of being culturally Jewish and no religious practice at all. I didn’t know that spirituality could be part of my life, and what that would feel like. Kolot has met me where I am every step of the way — from struggling to read transliterations, to Friday night children’s services, to wearing a tallis for the first time, becoming a Bat Mitzvah as an adult, and davening every morning. I am grateful to have found a Jewish community that embodies inclusivity, creativity, deep learning, social justice, and caring fellowship."

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.