As part of our year of celebration as we approach Rabbi Zemel’s retirement on June 30, 2025, the Celebration Committee presents a three-part series of panels, Imagining the Jewish Future, featuring accomplished rabbis, thinkers, and Jewish leaders from the United States, Israel and Canada.
Please join us for the third and final part of the series, “The Future of American Jews and Israel” featuring a discussion with Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, and Rabbi Hilly Haber. This panel will be moderated by Rabbi Stephanie Crawley.
Registration is NOT required to attend this event. We look forward to welcoming our guests to Temple Micah.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs
Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. She is the author of Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community and There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition, both published by Jewish Lights. She has published in The Washington Post, Slate, NBCNews.com, JTA, the Forward, the Jerusalem Post, and other publications, as well as chapters in more than a dozen edited volumes. She has appeared as a commenter on MSNBC, CNN, CodeSwitch, and other media. She has been named three times to the Forward’s list of 50 influential American Jews and to Newsweek’s list of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America. The New York Times featured her as one of “Six New Yorkers Who Made the City a Better, Cooler, Fairer Place in 2023.”
She holds rabbinic ordination and an MA in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was a Wexner Fellow; an MS in Urban Affairs from Hunter College, and a BA from Columbia University. She is also a graduate of the Mandel Institute Jerusalem Fellows Program. She lives in New York with her husband, Rabbi Guy Austrian, and their two daughters.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein joined Harvard Hillel as Executive Director on June 1, 2024 after six years as the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. Jason’s background is as diverse as Harvard’s Jewish community: a childhood at Temple Micah in Washington DC, formative years studying at Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in northern Israel, and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. From 2010-2018, Jason taught on the faculty of the Hadar Institute.
In addition to rabbinic ordination, Jason holds an AB in Social Studies from Harvard College magna cum laude and a Masters in Talmud from JTS. He is also the recipient of numerous awards including the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Covenant Foundation’s 2015 Pomegranate Prize for Emerging Educators.
Jason and Arielle are grateful to be raising their daughter and two sons in Brookline.
Rabbi Hilly Haber
Rabbi Hilly Haber is the Director of Social Justice Organizing and Education at Central Synagogue in New York City. Ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Haber was a Wexner Graduate Fellow and a Tisch Fellow at Temple Micah. She previously served as the Director of Urban Mitzvah Corps in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as an intern at Temple Beth Jacob in El Centro, California, and as an intern with the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). She is a contributor to the CCAR Press book, “Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Social Justice.”
Rabbi Haber is currently pursuing her PhD at Union Theological Seminary. Prior to joining Central, she was a student rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, New Jersey. Rabbi Haber earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. Rabbi Haber, along with Rabbi Daniel Ross, helped lead the Spartan Race team during their time at Hebrew Union College.
Originally from New York, she lives in New Jersey with her wife and son.