

Conversations with our Partners in Israel: Rabbi Rani Jaeger and Dr. Michal Muszkat-Barkan
Join us for a presentation by Rabbi Rani Jaeger and Dr. Michal Muszkat-Barkan of the Jerusalem Emergency Command. JEC is made up of hundreds of volunteers from several civil society organizations including the pro-democracy protest group Safeguarding Our Shared Home. Volunteers are working to connect evacuees from the displaced communities with families who can house them and organizing to support their basic needs while they are away from their homes.
Rabbi Rani Jaeger is a research fellow of the Kogod Research Center and head of the recently formed Tanakh Initiative at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He was one of the founders of the Institute’s Be’eri Program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity Education.
Rani received his doctorate from Bar-Ilan University on Jewish-Israeli culture as perceived by the poet Avraham Shlonsky. He was a participant in the first cohort of the Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis and received rabbinical ordination from the Shalom Hartman Institute and HaMidrasha at Oranim in September 2016.
Rani is one of the founders of Beit Tefilah Israeli, a secular synagogue in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Dr. Michal Muszkat-Barkan is an associate professor of Jewish education in the Parallel Track at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the director of the Department of Education and Professional Development at the HUC-JIR Jerusalem campus. She heads the Rikma MA program in Pluralistic Jewish Education in partnership with the Melton Center for Jewish Education at Hebrew University. Michal is the founder and head of the “Teachers’ Lounge” in memory of Shira Banki , a professional development program for Arab and Jewish educators in Jerusalem. Her fields of research include professional development for teachers and rabbis. She is a teacher in ideologies and pluralism in Jewish education.