Over the summer, two of our board members, Brent Goldfarb and Jennifer Oko, submitted their resignations from the Temple Micah Board.
The Board has appointed two new members to serve these open positions until our next annual meeting in 2025. Please join us in welcoming Emily Tamkin and Peter Van Praagh.
Emily Tamkin and her husband, Neil Bhatiya, have been members of Temple Micah since 2020. They joined after streaming Temple Micah’s Yom Kippur services that year and being taken with how the community spoke about interfaith families, as well as Rabbi Crawley’s message that the day was one of joy. They were drawn, too, to a Temple Micah guiding principle: Reform is a verb. Since then, they have loved being a part of the community. Emily is in her second year of the drash mentorship program and participated in My Promised Land group discussion moderation.
Emily is a journalist and the author of The Influence of Soros and Bad Jews and is at work on a third book on Holocaust remembrance in pop culture, politics, and foreign policy. She is a contributing columnist at the Forward (see her most recent article here) and writes regularly for the New Republic, Slate, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Previously, she covered US foreign affairs at Foreign Policy and BuzzFeed News and foreign policy, society, and politics as US editor at the New Statesman. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, a Heinrich Böll fellowship, a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, and was part of the inaugural class of Shalom Hartman writers and journalists. She and Neil are also the proud owners of a rescue Beagle-mix named Shiloh.
Peter Van Praagh, his wife Lena, and their three children consider Temple Micah to be a part of their very identity and are proud to be Temple Micah Reform Jews.
Peter is the Founder and President of HFX, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization whose mission is to strengthen strategic cooperation among the world’s democracies. Under his leadership, HFX has become a prominent organization known globally for bringing together policymakers from around the world at its annual Halifax International Security Forum. Because women’s participation and leadership in international security affairs leads to more peaceful and equitable outcomes, Peter began the Peace With Women Fellowship that brings senior female military officers from NATO and NATO partner countries to the US and Canada for study tours. HFX also promotes youth participation in international affairs with its 15@15: Youth Building Democracy program.
Peter’s career in international affairs spans nearly 30 years and is marked by a deep commitment to understanding and justice. Before establishing HFX in 2009, Peter lived overseas for nearly a decade as Chief of Party for the National Democratic Institute in the Former Soviet Union and in Turkey and operated throughout the Muslim world, including Afghanistan, in the post 9/11 environment. Peter also served as Senior Director for Foreign Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and as Deputy Vice President at the National Endowment for Democracy.
In addition to his leadership at HFX, Peter is father to Yasha (20), Sophia (16) and Elizabeth (11), all of whom are Machon Micah educated and who consider Temple Micah as an extension of their home and married to Lena, who was born and educated in the Soviet Union and who is thankful to have Micah as a comfortable and safe place to raise a Jewish family.