Staff

Noam Dolgin  Executive Director

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Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, Noam has worked as a leading Jewish environmental and Israel environmental educator, organizer and activist for more than 10 years.  Noam work history includes 7 years as the Associate Director of the Teva Learning Center, North America's foremost Jewish environmental education organization, and co-founding Adam Va-Adamah, Canada’s First Jewish Environmental Organization.  His passion for Israel comes many from years involved with Habonim Dror Youth Movement and from his two years living on Kibbutz.

Becca Weaver Educational Director 

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Board of Directors, USA

Rabbi Michael M. Cohen Past Chair, Rabbinic Advisor

Rabbi Michael Cohen grew up in Ewing, NJ where he co-founded the town's first recycling center in the mid- 1970s while he was still in high school. Rabbi Cohen is a graduate of the University of Vermont and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He was the Rabbi of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont, 1990-2000. He has also served as President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. Rabbi Cohen is presently the Director of Special Projects for the Friends of the Arava Institute (www.arava.org), were he has previously worked as a founding faculty member of the program in 1996 while on sabbatical from the Israel Congregation and again in 2000, and 2001- 2006 he served as the Executive Director of The Arava Institute North America. He is also the VP Global Resource Development for the Arava Power Company which is working to make Solar Power the main energy source for southern Israel and Jordan. He is the author if numerous articles, a VPR Commentator, and is completing writing a novella, "Einstein's Rabbi."

Lisa Friedman

Lisa Friedman serves as President of The Lisa and Maury Friedman Foundation, founded in August 2004 to fulfill Lisa’s life long pursuit passion for the environment and social justice. The foundation was created as a vehicle to support emerging eco-worldviews through environmental education.  Lisa has a B.A. degree in Environmental Studies from Pitzer College and an M.A. degree in Environmental Education from California State University at San Bernardino. She looks forward to working towards a mutual goal of providing students and adults of all ages the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment.

Lee Wallach

Lee H. Wallach is a founding board member and President of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life of Southern California, Co-Chair of the Los Angeles Interfaith Environmental Council, and is on the board of the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters.  Currently he is Managing Partner with Rocket Reporting Network, a deposition reporting firm and is CEO of Community Assets Consulting; a firm specializing in assisting Israeli and United States environmental technology companies with business in California.  In addition, Wallach holds executive and board member positions with the State Bar Examiners Committee, Legal Cabinet of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, USC Hillel Foundation, Children Uniting Nations, the state Jewish Public Affairs Council and Charity Finders Corp.  He also serves on the Los Angeles Business Council’s Energy Commission and the Los Angeles Energy Coalition. He was formerly Executive Director of Days of Dialogue, a LA city race relation’s organization, and Director of the Commission on Urban Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. He has held prior positions in community relations with the University of Southern California, and the City of Los Angeles. Lee holds two Masters degrees from USC -- one in public administration and one in social work.

Daniel Orenstein

Dr. Daniel Orenstein recently completed his Ph.D. at Brown's Center for Environmental Studies (2006), where he investigated the social forces driving land use/cover change (LUCC) in Israel and the ecological implications of those changes.  Daniel studied Environmental Biology and Management at U.C. Davis (B.Sc. 1992), and ecology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel (M.Sc. 1996), where he investigated the impact of leaf litter on ecosystem flows in arid environments. Following the completion of his masters research, he completed his army service in Israel and married Sigalit Zchut.  He then taught environmental studies at the Rothberg School for Overseas Studies at Hebrew University, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and at WUJS-Arad, and for six years was an educational programmer and field guide with the Jewish National Fund (KKL).  He speaks widely on environmental issues and his op-eds and book reviews have appeared in the Jerusalem Report, Jerusalem Post, NPR's "On Point" and local Jewish community and student newspapers. 

David Krantz

David Krantz was a charter delegate candidate on the GZA's 2001 World Zionist Congress slate. David works in the fields of journalism, statistics and education. In his spare time he brings people together to repair our environment and ourselves.  

Ami Greener

Jessica Gordon

Jessica Gordon is a second-year student at Yale Law School, where she focuses on climate change law and policy.  A native of suburban Philadelphia, she graduated from Harvard College in 2003 with a degree in History and Science.  She spent two years as a community health technician with the Peace Corps in Madagascar before matriculating at American University's Washington College of Law and then transferring to Yale.  Jessica spent the summer of 2007 analyzing carbon offsetting prospects as a KKL climate change intern under Alon Tal.  Her interests include Havurah Judaism and sustainable/vegetarian cooking, and she is excited to join GZA, Ameinu, and the JNF board.