Noah Alper, founder of Noah's Bagels and Bread & Circus, has almost four decades of business experience. He is a serial entrepreneur, whose experience includes concept creation, marketing, retailing, food service and sales management. He is available for consulting in the areas of entrepreneurship, strategic management, executive coaching and business planning. His new book, Business Mensch: Timeless Wisdom for Today's Entrepreneur, is a practical and spiritual guide to help aspiring entrepreneurs find success and satisfaction in their work. Visit www.businessmensch.net for more information.

Deena Aranoff is assistant professor of medieval Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. Her interests include rabbinic literature, medieval patterns of Jewish thought and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. Deena is also a community educator and teaches Bible, rabbinics, and Jewish mysticism in a variety of adult education programs. Deena is also a recently certified yoga instructor and teaches yoga in San Francisco.

Adam Berman recently completed his tenure as the Executive Director of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center (2002-2008), a spiritually vibrant, socially progressive, multigenerational retreat center and community in the Connecticut Berkshires. Adam was also the founding director of ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship, a three month leadership training program for Jewish young adults that integrates Jewish learning and living with sustainable agriculture, green living skills, teaching and contemplative spiritual practice. For three years (1996 - 1999), Adam served as the Director of the Teva Learning Center, the leading Jewish environmental education program in the United States. He holds an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A in Environmental Studies from Brown University. He currently lives in Berkeley.

Rachel Biale is the author of Women and Jewish Law (Schocken, 1984), which got its start as a course at Lehrhaus in 1977. She has taught classes and lectured on women, gender and family relations in Jewish tradition in the Bay Area, and in other cities in the US and abroad. She founded and has served as the director of Lehrhaus Judaica’s “Bible by the Bay.” Rachel was born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in Israel. She received her BA and MA in Jewish History from UCLA and her MSW from Yeshiva University. She is the former Bay Area Regional Director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History, Director of the Program in Jewish Studies and is currently the Chair of the Department of History at the University of California at Davis. He is the author of six books including: Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History), Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians and the newly published Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought. He is the editor of Cultures of the Jews: A New History; and, together with Susannah Heschel and Michael Galchinsky, of Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism.

Rabbi Shalom Bochner serves as the Director of LifeLong Learning for Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley where he oversees adult and youth education. Before moving to Berkeley in 2008, Rabbi Bochner served as the Director of Jewish Campus Life, Executive Director and Campus Rabbi for Santa Cruz Hillel. He has a background in formal and informal Jewish education having served as the Regional Youth Director and Executive Director of United Synagogue in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, Director of Camp Solomon Schechter in Olympia, WA and Camp Givah in Upstate, New York, Education Director at Congregation Sinai in San Jose, and Judaica Director for the Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos. Rabbi Bochner has a BA from SUNY Albany in Sociology and Judaic Studies, an MS in Education from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and received traditional semichah (rabbinical ordination) in Jerusalem in 2004.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was born in Washington State and raised in Northern California. In 1977, he became Muslim and subsequently traveled to the Muslim world and studied for ten years in the U. A. E., Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West Africa. He received teaching licenses in various Islamic subjects from several well-known scholars in various countries. After ten years of studies abroad, he returned to the USA and took degrees in Religious Studies and Health Care. He has traveled all over the world giving talks on Islam. He also founded Zaytuna College which has established an international reputation for presenting a classical picture of Islam in the West and which is dedicated to the revival of traditional study methods and the sciences of Islam. Shaykh Hamza is the first American lecturer to teach in Morocco's prestigious and oldest University, the Karaouine in Fes. In addition, he has translated into modern English several classical Arabic traditional texts and poems and has authored numerous publications. Shaykh Hamza currently resides in Northern California with his wife and five children.

Munir Jiwa is the founding director of the Center for Islamic Studies and Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Anthropology from Columbia University and an M.T.S. in World Religions from Harvard Divinity School. His research interests include Islam and Muslims in the West, media, aesthetics, religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue.

Prof. Naomi Seidman is Koret Professor of Jewish Culture and Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her first book, A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish, appeared in 1997. Her second, Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, was published in 2006.