College Faculty

Dr. Jeffrey Schein is currently the director of the Text Me: Ancient Jewish Wisdom Meets Contemporary Technology project of the Covenant Foundation.  He is the senior education consultant for Jewish Education of the Mordecai M Kaplan Center for Jewish Peoplehood and also a professor in the joint doctoral program in educational leadership of Hebrew College and Lesley College.

For twenty four years  he was a Professor and Director of the Education Department at the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland where he taught and mentored over 100 graduate students who received their Masters’ degree in Jewish education.   He also served as the senior consultant to the Lekhu Lakhem project of the Mandel Jewish Center, a major initiative to change the Jewish character of eighteen JCC camps across North America through the professional development of their directors.  He served the Mandel foundation as a member of the visioning professors group convened to enlarge the uses of the groundbreaking Visions of Jewish Education volume (Fox, Marom, and Sheffler)

For seventeen years he served as the education director and then senior consultant for Jewish education to the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.  For nine years he served on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.  For three years he directed the Project Mishpacha initiative of the Greater Jewish community of Philadelphia and for three years he was the director of the Adolescent Initiative of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. He was the education director of Reform and Conservative synagogue programs for fifteen years.  

Within the Reconstructionist  community,  Dr. Schein is the founding Rabbi of congregation Kol HaLev, the Reconstructionist community of Cleveland. He was the first non-pulpit Rabbi to receive the Ira Eisenstein award for community service.  

Beyond the Reconstructionist community, Dr. Schein's leadership positions have included serving as national program chair for the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education and President of the association for Institutions of Higher Jewish Learning of North America.

Dr. Schein is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1977) and of the doctoral program in curriculum studies of Temple University (1980).   He is the author (or co-author) of the following works: Creative Jewish Education (Rossel books), Targilon: a Guide for Charting the Course of Jewish Family Education (JESNA  and JRF), Windows on the Jewish Soul (JRF), Growing Together: Resources, Programs and Experiences for Jewish Family Education (ARE/Behrman House), and most recently Kol Ha-No’ar: The Voice of Children (a prayer book for young children and their families, JRF) as well as numerous journal articles about Jewish, general, and religious education.

With his wife Deborah, an early childhood professor, he has developed a seminar series "The 100 Languages of Children Meet the 70 Faces of Torah" designed to create frameworks for learning across the Jewish life cycle. Together Jeffrey and Deborah presented the seminar as guest scholars for Leo Baeck College and the Jewish community of Great Britain in the spring of 2004, at Siegal College in 2009 and 2013, in West Palm Beach in 2009 and in Detroit in 2010.

Jonathan grew up in a small town in south Louisiana and graduated from Louisiana State University in 2003 with a degree in Marketing. While never attending a traditional camp growing up, Jonathan spent college summers in Maine at Camp Laurel, and in Michigan at Camp Miniwanca. After graduation, he spent the next eight years as the Boys' Director of Camp Champions, a residential summer camp outside of Austin, TX. In 2012, Jonathan left Camp Champions to pursue a Masters’ degree in Higher Education Administration and Leadership, and to run leadership programs for the University of Houston Bauer College of Business. In 2016, he returned to camping, this time in the nonprofit world, as the Camping Director for YMCA CAMP CLASSEN, a residential camp located in Davis, OK. Finally, Jonathan returned to Louisiana in June of 2019 to take on the role of VP of Operations for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Acadiana. Jonathan has an incredible wife (Taylor), two girls (Clara and Eleanor), and a new son (Henry).

Dr. Spickermann is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas Permian Basin, where he teaches courses ranging from modern Germany, modern Europe, and modern China to more thematic graduate courses on industrialization, democratization, and the Holocaust. A UC Berkeley graduate, he earned his PhD in German history at the University of Michigan in 1994. His doctorate concerned the interactions of state policy, ethnic rivalry, and political mobilization in an eastern frontier province of the German Empire. He is currently working on a quite different subject: a book on the history of adoption in 20th-century Germany. He is also the book review editor for Nationalities Papers, the journal of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, an organization specializing in the politics and history of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet sphere, and the Middle East.

Elisha Stein is a Philadelphia-based Jewish educator, attorney, and writer who teaches contemporary Jewish topics, ethics, law, and Talmud. He earned his J.D. with honors from The George Washington University, where he also did graduate work in Russian and East European Studies. Elisha holds an M.A. in Jewish Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a certificate in Jewish Studies from Mechon Pardes. He did his undergraduate work (B.A.) in Philosophy and Russian Studies at Muhlenberg College. Elisha practiced law (business and civil litigation) for ten years before focusing exclusively on Jewish education.