The Board of Trustees meets at 7:15 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  Kehilla members are welcome to attend our meetings.  Board members include:

Sharon G., Acting Chair

Sharon has been a Kehilla member since the early 1990’s, with her husband, Howard Rome and daughter, Anya. She has served on the Education Committee and the Infrastructure Committee, and has led the organization of our High Holy Days services for several years.  She is also Chair of the Terumah (Capital Campaign) project committee. Sharon was an employment lawyer for 14 years, until her unexpected early retirement due to cancer (which is in blessed remission).  Although she had previously made time to serve on the board of the Jewish Bulletin and on the Executive Committee of the Bureau of Jewish Education, ending her law career meant beginning a real exploration of the heart toward a meaningful Jewish life.  She feels that Kehilla provides a wonderful and rich arena for that exploration, with intriguing and challenging opportunities to make a personal contribution to our community.

Ron Cohen

Ron Cohen, along with his son, Josh, has been a Kehilla member for nine years.  He served on the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Committee and then subsequently a series of committies concerned with Kehilla's space: the  Space Task Force (part of the Strategic Planning process), the Home of our Own Committee, and most recently, following purchase of the building on Grand Avenue, the Facilities Committee.  As a result of his committee involvement, the passage of time, and several friends joining Kehilla, he has progressed from a semi-detached observer who liked Kehilla's high holiday services and religious school but had little connection to the community, to someone who feels very much at home in Kehilla,  is engaged in it, and spiritually/culturally enriched by it.   As the work of the Facilities Committee wound down, he felt that it was time to look for a broader way to work for the Kehilla that reflected his increased connection.

Ron’s role in the Space Task Force was one of constructive skepticism and analysis, both skills acquired through his decades of work as a physicist.  He came in recognizing that it would be nice for Kehilla to own a building but dubious about the finances and what the financial pressures might do to the community.  He wound up as an enthusiastic supporter of a "Home of our Own" provided that the finances could be made to work, and convinced that the finances might just be doable for a building with a price tag around that of the “Grand Shul.”   He hopes that he can bring these skills to the Kehilla  Board and that, in so doing, will be able to help further build this wonderful community.

Diana Feiger

Seth Frohman

Seth Frohman has been a member of Kehilla for over 8 years.  He was a member of the original space needs assessment committee and part of the group that identified the 1300 Grand Ave building.  He and his partner, Rafi Hoch, live in Berkeley with their two children, Claire, 13, who just became a Bat Mitzvah at Kehilla and Bette, 10, who is in the 5th grade at Kehilla School.
 
Seth has a Masters degree in Social Work and a long history as a rehabilitation social worker, social work department head and health care administrator. For the past 10 years he has been a Director of Operations at a small managed care company, specializing in catastrophic workers compensation injuries. He has extensive experience in operations and personnel management.
 
Seth has previous board experience as a board member of Families with Children from China - Northern California and has coordinated their annual Between Two New Years parties (with over 700 attendees) for the past several years. He looks forward to the possibility of serving on the Kehilla board and giving back to the community that has given him and his family so much.

Julie Litwin

Julie Litwin is a member of Kehilla’s Board of Trustees and its liason to the Youth Education Committee.  She has been a part of the Youth Education committee for seven years and is thrilled about how Kehilla School and family programming, in general, are growing and flourishing at Kehilla.  She is currently a homeschooling mom and was previously a midwife.  She lives with her wonderful partner, Shelley Sella, their wonderful son, NoahLani and various reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids.

JoAnn Lovejoy

JoAnn Lovejoy joined Kehilla in 1998 for its spirituality, progressive politics and welcoming climate. She attempts to give back to our community by serving on the Board of Trustees, Bikkor Cholim, and volunteering in the Kehilla office.  She comes from an interfaith household and has found Kehilla extremely welcoming in its support of diversity.
 
JoAnn worked for 31 years in the non-profit world doing casework, clinical supervision and management.  She has taught high school, community college, and several courses in feminist psychology graduate program.  She has also been an activist in civil rights, queer and women's liberation movements.  

Barbara Rhine

Barbara Rhine is a practicing lawyer in downtown Oakland. Her legal work consists of representing children in the middle of difficult custody disputes; mediating divorces, representing parents in juvenile dependency cases, which involve the foster care system; school discipline cases; guardianships; and police misconduct cases.

In the past, Barbara has been a lawyer for the United Farmworkers Union (during the largest farm worker strike in California history), and a law professor at San Francisco's Golden Gate University (Rabbi David was among her students). She is also a writer, with one novella published todate.  Her hobbies include tennis, hiking and piano.  She has been a lifelong progressive activist.

Barbara's involvement with Kehilla began when her children (two daughters, now grown) were very young.  In addition to serving on the Board, Barbara is currently active on Kehilla's Green Committee, and is working with the Economic Justice Committee on a joint project to involve Kehilla with green jobs for Oakland.

Barbara particularly values Kehilla for its active engaged stance in the world, and for its welcoming of all Jews who want to come, as well as all others who wish to accompany them.

Josh Wirtschafter

Joshua Schon Wirtschafter has served on the Kehilla Board of Trusteesas a Member at Large since 2007, having joined Kehilla in 2000. Josh is a klezmer fiddler and a songwriter, who has brought his music to Kehilla on many occasions, usually with the vocal assistance of his alto alter-ego, Diane Schon Wirtschafter.  Josh and Diane have three children, and the older two have joyously celebrated their b'nei mitzvah at Kehilla.  Josh has also been active in the Reconstructionist movement, having founded a Reconstructionist congregation in Minneapolis and a havurah in Berkeley. Professionally, Josh is an environmental enforcement attorney with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.