Our Team

  • Sara (she/her) is a rabbi, founder, and, at her best, cultivator of ideas and dreams. She is currently leading Beloved after her 4 years as spiritual leader of Beloved Brooklyn. Prior to Beloved, Sara was the founder and executive director of ImmerseNYC: A Community Mikveh Project, now part of the JCC Manhattan. A Brooklyn native, Sara now lives in Northampton, MA with her husband Isaac, 3 kids, and their new dog Wallace.

    Email Sara at sara@belovedgarden.org

  • Sam Hipschman Nunke (they/them) is a social worker by training who has worked in a range of settings offering program design and implementation, community cultivation, and deep listening for growth. They are a heart-forward community builder and connector who believes that earnestness and silliness are equally important. In addition to their work for Beloved, Sam offers somatic psychotherapy through private practice. They are growing their home in western Massachusetts with their spouse, Skye, and their dog, Maisy Muppet. 

    Email Sam at sam@belovedgarden.org

  • Amanda (she/her) brings to Beloved an innate knack for systems that make world-mending work possible. She is an experienced non-profit director who has worked in municipal finance, public health, community service, education, and the arts. Amanda thrives on solving complex logistical challenges, delights in a well-designed yet simple spreadsheet, and loves using these talents in service of her community. She's also a poet and a proud mom. Amanda lives with her magnificent kiddo in Western Massachusetts.

    Email Amanda at amanda@belovedgarden.org

  • Lauren is a fifth-generation resident of Western Massachusetts with nearly twenty years of experience in the nonprofit sector. After graduating from New York University School of Law, Lauren practiced immigration law for a decade, building legal departments in national domestic violence organizations, becoming an adjunct professor at age 27, and eventually founding Atlas: DIY, a cooperative center for immigrant youth and their allies in Sunset Park.

    In 2017, Lauren spent nearly a year living out of a van, providing immigration services and Know Your Rights trainings throughout the United States. Her work has been featured in four documentary films, as well as in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and on NPR’s All Things Considered.

    Alongside building two additional social impact organizations, Camp Equity and Notehouse, Lauren has spent the last eight years supporting lived-experience founders in building their own organizations through trainings, tools, and socioemotional support.

    Lauren is thrilled to be returning to an organization in Florence, where her great-great-grandparents immigrated in the eighteenth century, and to support spiritual leaders who have been so important to her own journey. She lives by Emma Goldman’s words: “If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution.”

Cultivators

  • Lior Gross (they/them) is learning to listen to the rhythms of the places they call home. They are a co-founder of the Nonbinary Hebrew Project, a rabbinical student at Hebrew Seminary, and have been shaped by learning and community in Shomeret Shalom, SVARA's Gemirna Kollel, Taproot's Immersion, IJS & Or HaLev's Yesod and Tiferet programs, and JOIN for Justice's Empower Fellowship.

  • Adam Horowitz (he/him) is an artist and organizer, dedicated to sparking possibility, radical imagination, and creative action in service of life. He's a co-founder of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, Nuns & Nones, and Taproot—and works locally, nationally, and internationally at the intersection of spirituality, culture, and social transformation. Adam is working with Beloved to research and tell stories from the emerging, experimental edgewaters of Jewish life and communities in the U.S. He lives in a House of Song and Hospitality on unceded Tiwa Territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. More about Adam here.

  • Stephanie (she/her) is non-profit leader and coach with expertise in organizational change and development. strategy, finance and operations who is passionate about creating and supporting thriving, innovative, and inclusive communities centered around the transformative power of belonging and connection for people of all ages. In addition to working with Beloved, Stephanie is the Executive Director of the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston and the founder of Ampersand Consulting Solutions.

  • Reed Love (they/them) is a passionate teacher, spiritual counselor, and musician. With over ten years of experience across Jewish movements and interfaith settings, Reed completed their chaplaincy residency at St. Mary's Medical Center where they enjoyed bringing yoga, music, and spirituality practices to the adolescent psychiatric ward. Reed is a hospice chaplain, certified massage therapist and yoga teacher, and has had a spiritual counseling, life cycle facilitation, and Craniosacral Therapy bodywork private practice for the past decade. Reed received their Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University in Women's and Gender Studies. They studied at Pardes in Jerusalem in a Year Fellowship Program and for two years at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. Reed completed a Masters in Judaic Studies, specializing in Jewish Values, Ethics and Action from the Academy of Jewish Religion of California. Their master's capstone project "Rainbow Lev, Jewish LGBTQ+ Teen Leadership Program Empowering Through Creative Ritual" received Jewish Innovation grants from Reconstructing Judaism and Clal to launch the first two cohorts in 2020-2021. Reed received the Mintz Family Foundation award for Creative Jewish Education and an award from The Levinson Foundation. They were a recipient of a grant from The Jim Joseph Foundation to launch the community program "We Are Stardust, A LGBTQ+ centered workshop celebrating the wisdom and magic of our bodies through creative practice." Reed currently leads Moving Traditions' National Tzelem Group for Jewish Gender Expansive Youth and serves as an interfaith home hospice chaplain. They live in the San Francisco Bay Area of California with their partner Maggie.

  • Jules Pashall (they/he) is a fat, white, trans/queer Jew who holds space as a somatic, creative and spiritual practitioner. Their offerings are built on the belief that undoing violent hierarchies and how they live in our bodies is part of the path of soul retrieval and collective liberation. For 15 years, they have been exploring fat as a resource for transformation. Jules holds a master’s degree in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and their writing can be found in The Fat Studies Journal and Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an Inclusive Somatics.Learn more at www.keshirahalev.com

  • Shula Pesach (she/they) is a Jewish educator, community ritualist, and trans theologian. She serves movements for collective liberation through her work with Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, as the Program Director for Taproot, and as the founder of B’yameinu Beit Midrash. Shula is an apprentice of bird-language, the tarot, and stretching strudel dough.

  • Molly Rosenberger (she/her) has devoted the past 6+ years supporting nonprofit organizations through program coordination, web/graphic design, and social media management. She’s particularly passionate about working in Jewish and spiritual spaces and feels happiest when she’s contributing to the continued education and expansion of individuals within these communities. Currently a student at Northeastern Illinois University in pursuit of a graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Molly hopes to grow her offerings to someday include being in relationship with others, as they traverse their healing paths.

Stewards

  • David (he/him) has worked as an executive coach, consultant, and facilitator within the Jewish community and beyond for over thirty years. While at Greater Boston’s Jewish Federation, David founded and directed the Leadership Development Institute (LDI), providing consultation, mentoring, and coaching in the areas of group dynamics, leadership, and organizational change.

    David’s is passionate about helping people and organizations succeed in not only meeting their goals and objectives, but in doing so in ways that develop and nurture both individuals and the organizational systems in which they work. Utilizing multiple frameworks for self-reflection and interpersonal dynamics, David works to weave differences into fabrics that enrich the organization rather than divide.

    He has led workshops and retreats for HUC’s Tisch Fellowship and for the Reconstructionist College. In addition, he has lectured and facilitated workshops at the national conferences of the URJ, NATA/NAASE as well as the Jewish Federations of New York, Baltimore, and Miami.

    Among his volunteer activities, David is currently on the board of 2Life Communities and is a supporter and former board member of Mayyim Hayyim, a mikveh rooted in ancient tradition, reinvented to serve the Jewish community of today.

  • Rabbi Dr. Yechiel Hoffman has enriched the Jewish journeys of children and adults in Los Angeles and around the world in synagogues, schools and community organizations. Yechiel guides organizations to foster creativity, holistic wellbeing and greater growth and performance, and promotes a relational approach to collective inquiry, collaboration, and experimentation. Yechiel raises the bar for the collaboration and growth for Jewish professionals in co-founding JedLab and the Independent Journeyers networks. In addition to serving on Beloved's board, Yechiel serves on the boards of the Jewish Studio Project, Gender Equity in Hiring Project, and R&R: The Rest of our Lives, transforming the broader Jewish community through innovative approaches to leadership development, social justice, creativity and human wellbeing. Yechiel received the prestigious Pomegranate Prize from the Covenant Foundation and earned a Doctorate in Education from Northeastern University.

  • Tobin Belzer PhD (she/her) is a Research Affiliate at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and an applied sociologist whose research and program evaluations have supported the work of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular non-profit organizations and philanthropists. She uses mixed methods to explore identity and character development among teens and emerging adults, organizational culture and leadership development, and topics including inclusion, congregational studies, gender, and arts and culture. She has supported the efforts of numerous foundations including the Jim Joseph Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Lilly Endowment, and others. Belzer has been a visiting scholar at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University, a Research Affiliate at Stanford SPARQ, and a research associate at CRCC.