Fred Astren, Professor and Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University and member of the Faculty in Middle East and Islamic Studies, received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, where he also earned a master’s degree in Arabic. Among Professor Astren’s publications are: Karaite Past and Jewish History (2004); Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication, and Interaction (Editor, with B. H. Hary and J. L. Hayes), Festschrift for William M. Brinner, E.J. Brill (2000); and The Jewish Printed Book in India: Imprints of the Blumenthal Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The Judah L. Magnes Museum (1992). His areas of research include minority/sectarian history in the Mediterranean Middle Ages, with special focus on Jewish history under Islam, Islamization, Jewish-Muslim relations, and the Karaite Jewish sect. Having recently published a study on Jews in the early medieval Muslim conquests of the Near East and Spain, he is currently writing a book on Jews in the Mediterranean of the early Middle Ages.

Julie Bernstein is Director of Campus and Community Programs, Middle East Project of the Jewish Community Relations Council. In this capacity, she has been leading advocacy efforts and producing educational resources throughout the Bay Area on behalf of Israel. Julie's experience and success combating Israel divestment and related issues, particularly on campus, has been recognized by national and international organizations.

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.

Morgan Blum is the Director of Education with the JFCS Holocaust Center. Originally, from the San Francisco Bay Area, Morgan graduated cum laude from Clark University with a B.A. in history specializing in Holocaust and genocide studies. Her Masters thesis focused on the forced removal of Aboriginal children as a case of genocide. A section of this thesis was published in Genocide Perspectives III edited by Colin Tatz.

Morgan currently develops curriculum and leads professional development workshops for Bay Area educators at the JFCS Holocaust Center. Morgan is an active member of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition and sits on the advisory board of the Genocide Education Project. Recent papers presented include Genocide prevention through Holocaust education at the International Association of Genocide Scholars conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Marc Dollinger is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. His books include Quest for Inclusion: Jews and Liberalism in Modern America, and California Jews (co-edited with Ava F. Kahn). He serves on the California advisory committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the board of the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, and is academic vice president of Lehrhaus Judaica.

John Efron is Koret Professor of Jewish History at UC Berkeley. A native of Melbourne, Australia, he earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University (1991). In his work, Efron has focused on the German-Jewish engagement with medicine, anthropology, and anti-Semitism. He has also written on Jewish political and popular culture in Central Europe, on Yiddish political satire in Poland and Israel, and on the role of sport in the modern Jewish experience. His books include Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe; Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Co-edited with Elisheva Carlebach and David Myers); Medicine and the German Jews: A History and The Jews: A History a cultural and social history of the Jewish people from antiquity to today. He is currently at work on a book entitled, Jewish Orientalism in the Age of Emancipation.

Nina Simone Grotch directs the educational programs of the Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific Region. She has over 20 years experience facilitating interactive workshops for children, youth, and parents and teachers. As the Associate Director, Ms. Grotch is responsible for Holocaust education and facilitating anti-bias workshops for schools and community groups about issues of prejudice and discrimination. Prior to joining ADL, Ms. Grotch worked on employing homeless adults and youth and also taught at the elementary level. She has presented at numerous conferences for educators, youth, police officers, and parents on combating hate and creating safe school environments. Ms. Grotch has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English Literature.

Erich Gruen is an American classicist and ancient historian. He was the Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been teaching since 1966. His areas of focus include Roman and Greek history and Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His book Diaspora: Jews Amidst the Greeks and Romans was published in 2002. Prof. Gruen currently serves as chair of the Jewish Studies program at UC Berkeley. His most recent book is Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (2011).

William Hagen is Professor of History emeritus at the University of California, Davis. He has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Max-Planck Society, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (U. Chicago Press), Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge University Press), and the forthcoming German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation (Cambridge University Press). His research articles on antisemitism in central European history include “Before the ‘Final Solution:’ Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Antisemitism in Interwar Germany and Poland.” Journal of Modern History (July, 1996): 1-31; “The Moral Economy of Popular Violence: The Pogrom in Lwów, November 1918,” in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland (Cornell University Press, 2005), 124-47; and “The Three Horsemen of the Holocaust: Antisemitism, East European Empire, Aryan Folk Community,” forthcoming in Helmut Walser Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford UP, 2011). Under contract with Cambridge University Press is a book provisionally entitled Folk Theater Under Apocalyptic Skies: Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland and the Polish-Russian Borderlands, 1914-1920.

Rabbi Douglas Kahn is Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. He serves on the Global Council of United Religions Initiative. He previously served as co-chair of the Intergroup Clearinghouse, San Francisco’s major organization addressing issues of intergroup tensions, and President of the CRC Directors Association. Prior to joining the JCRC staff in 1982, he was the Executive Director of Hillel at George Washington University. A fourth generation San Franciscan, Doug received his rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and his B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. He is the recipient of the Jewish Community Federation’s Executive of the Year Award and the community’s Israel in our Hearts award.

Peter Kenez is a historian specializing in Russian history and Eastern Europe. He teaches courses on Soviet cinema, and an interdisciplinary course on the Holocaust, with literature professor Maury Baumgarten. He has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz since 1966. Prof. Kenez’ publications include Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: The Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944-1948, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, and Varieties of Fear: Growing Up Jewish under Nazism and Communism. He is presently working on a new book titled The Road to the Holocaust.

Fred Rosenbaum, founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, has written four books on Bay Area Jewish history and three books on the Holocaust. He has taught numerous courses on the history of contemporary Israel at Lehrhaus and the University of San Francisco. He has been awarded the S.Y. Agnon Gold Medal for Intellectual Excellence by the Scopus Society of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Covenant Award for Exceptional Jewish Educators, as well as the Anne and Robert Cowan Writers’ Award for making an exceptional impact on the Bay Area by writing on Jewish themes.

Laura Rosenzweig is currently working on her doctorate in U.S. History at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Laura’s research focuses on American Jewish history, and in particular, the Jewish experience in the 1930s. Her dissertation, "Hollywood's Spies: Jewish Infiltration of Nazi and Pro-Nazi Groups in Los Angeles, 1933-1941" has been supported by grants from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the American Jewish Archives, the Annenberg Foundation and numerous research grants from UCSC. Laura is a lecturer in U.S. and in Jewish history at San Francisco State and UCSC. Laura holds a BA in History from Union College (Schenectady, NY) and an MA in Education from Stanford.

Daniel S. Sandman serves as the Regional Director of the Central Pacific Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League. Originally from Chicago, Dan comes to the Bay Area by way of Los Angeles where he most recently chaired a Los Angeles city committee dedicated to addressing public safety issues. As chairman, Dan took the lead on emergency preparedness initiatives and helped build bridges between his constituents and city officials. In May, the City of Los Angeles honored Dan for his public service achievements. Prior to becoming involved in public service, Dan was Director of Business and Legal Affairs for The Tennis Channel, Inc. in Santa Monica, California. He has extensive experience as a lead trial attorney with firms in Chicago and Los Angeles. Dan was a television news producer before entering law school. He is a graduate of The John Marshall Law School and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Now having settled in the Bay Area, where his wife grew up, Dan is focused on furthering the ADL mission of fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of injustice.

Leon Wieseltier has served as the literary editor of The New Republic since 1983. He is a nationally renowned public intellectual and author of several books, including Kadish (a National Book Award finalist in 2000) and Against Identity.

Diane Wolf is a Sociology professor at UC Davis. Her research interests include Jewish Studies, Children of Immigrants, and Memory and Trauma. Her recent book, Beyond Anne Frank: Jewish Families in Postwar Holland (U.C. Press, 2007) analyzed childhood memory, family dynamics and trauma during and after war and genocide.

Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan is the Senior Educator of Lehrhaus Judaica. Since 1975 he has been a Jewish educator in the San Francisco Bay Area, learning with children, teens, families, and adults. He has been active in informal education, tours, community development and congregational life. In 2002 he was awarded the Covenant Award as “An Exceptional Jewish Educator who has had a significant impact on others, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the transmission of Jewish knowledge, values, and identity.”

Louis de Groot was born in 1929 and grew up in Arnhem, Holland. His family went into hiding in 1942 and he was separated from his parents and sister who were betrayed, deported, and killed in Auschwitz in 1944. Louis lived in 21 hiding places during those three years. After the war, he lived in a Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam. He fought in Palestine during the War of Independence and later emigrated to the U.S. where he was drafted in the US army shortly after his arrival. He attended Columbia University in New York City followed by advanced graduate work at New York University in Economics. He worked for IBM and settled in the Bay Area with his family in 1977.