Biographies

Noah Zeldin is a Fulbright alumnus with an educational background in economics, German and music composition.  His research in the course of his PhD emphasized the central role played by the workers’ cultural and educational associations of the Weimar Republic in the production and reception of the learning-pieces of Berthold Brecht and Hans Eisler. He holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Chicago. Currently he works as a Senior Technical Analyst at S&P Global Ratings. 

Courtney Hodrick is a Lecturer in Civic, Global, and Liberal Education at Stanford. She received her BA in Humanities from Yale University in 2016. In the 2016-2017 academic year, she worked as an English Language Teaching Assistant through Fulbright Austria at the Pädagogoische Hochschule Vorarlberg. Courtney completed her PhD in German Studies at Stanford University in 2023, and during the 2023-2024 academic year held the Eli Reinhard Stanford Alumni Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies at Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Her dissertation focused on the role that hope plays in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, who she places in a tradition of anti-metaphysical Jewish thought.  G.W.F. Hegel was a key personage and theoretician in her framing of Arendt’s project.

Yidi Wu is a PhD candidate at Boston University in Religious Studies.   He has a long-time interest in the intellectual lineage of Leo Strauss.  His research focuses on Hans Georg-Gadamer and others, and his interest in Strauss and Gadamer has opened up a vista in thought comprehending Marburg Neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen, and Franz Rosenzweig who was in Cohen’s orbit. Yiddi’s dissertation investigates how modern Jewish intellectuals of the interwar period in Germany responded to the political crises and social upheavals erupting all around them.

Maëlle Le Ligne studied philosophy in France at Toulouse University where she wrote a thesis on Franz Rosenzweig’s philosophy under the direction of Dr. Jad Hatem. She also holds a Master degree from the Catholic University in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. There her writing received the mark of “highest distinction.” She is an alumni of the Erasmus Mundus program, “Contemporary French and Modern German Philosophy in Europe”.  Maëlle obtained the prestigious teacher certification in philosophy in 2010 and taught philosophy in France for seven years before taking up her current position in the Lycee Français de San Francisco in California. In 2025, she was admitted to the national French “philosophy aggregation” contest, rank 13th.

Rav-Chazzan Michael received his master’s degree in Jewish Education and Cantorial Ordination from Hebrew College in 2007, where he was awarded an academic prize in Judaics and Hazzanut. In 2023, he received rabbinic ordination through the Cantors to Rabbis track at the Academy for Jewish Religion, Yonkers, NY and is President of the New England Region of the Cantors Assemblyd serves on the Conservative/Masorti movement’s Committee for Jewish Laws and Standards. Prior to coming to Temple Emeth, he served as a cantorial soloist-educator and taught at Prozdor of Hebrew College. In his spare time, Cantor Michael is an avid bicyclist and reader of fiction, particularly dystopian and cosmic horror. Cantor Michael and his partner, Dr. Ray Feller, are the proud parents of Leonardo and Ramona.

Rabbi Avi Winokur

Rabbi Winokur is an alumnus of Brandeis University ’72 in Sociology.  He is also a graduate of
Georgetown University Law Center ’76.  He practiced law, mainly litigation from 1977-84, before entering the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where he was ordained in 1991. Avi has studied with Medieval Jewish Thought and Hasidism and received recognition for his scholarship winning paper on Jewish mysticism, Pesikta Rabbati 20:4 in particular.  Rabbi Winokur had the privilelge of doing graduate work at the Hebrew Univeristy, and serving pulpits
in Manhattan’s West End Synagogue 1992-2001, and Philadelphia’s Society Hill Synagogue from 2001-2020.  Avi was part of the second rabbinic cohort at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and has throughout his career been an active adult Jewish educator.

Magnus Imber is a first-year doctoral student. He is working on the influential philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. His research focuses on the difficulties posed by liberalism in interpreting and engaging with pre-modern texts and traditions.

Peini Feng is an undergraduate studying political science and philosophy at Boston College. He is particularly interested in the political implications of different metaphysical stances, and whether revelation is necessary for the best kind of life. Following this thread, he investigates the tradition of classical and medieval political philosophy, such as Plato, Alfarabi, and Maimonides. He aims to study the depth of the tension between human beings’ natural need to know “the All” and the inevitable limits of this attempt.

Ethan Yu is an MA student at the UChicago Divinity School and Research Fellow at the Kierkegaard Summer Institute. He recently finished an MA in Psychoanalysis at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies and wrote his thesis on Freud and projection. He finished his BS in psychology and BA in philosophy, religious studies, and Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara in 2022. He is interested in the intersection of Marxism, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology and their deep inheritance from the Jewish and Christian traditions, especially in their construals of the concept of love.