Meet Our Staff

Michael Hopkins, Executive Director

Michael Hopkins has devoted over thirty years to building inclusive Jewish community. He holds an MSW from the Yeshiva University Wurzweiler School of Social Work, and spent the majority of his professional career directing and growing Jewish Community Centers across the country. Most recently, he was executive director of JCC Metrowest, one of the largest JCC’s in the country with an $18 million budget and over 100 full and part time staff. Michael has been involved with Nehirim for three years, and recently served on Nehirim’s Board of Directors. He is also a key lay leader and volunteer at Hazon and at Easton Mountain, the gay men’s retreat and residential community in upstate New York. Michael brings to his leadership of Nehirim both this extensive background in helping Jewish nonprofits reach their full potential and serve the needs of a diverse range of Jewish adults and families and his personal journey as a gay Jewish man whose life has been personally impacted by Nehirim.

Jay Michaelson, Founding Director

Jay Michaelson is the founding director of Nehirim. For over ten years, Jay has been a leading advocate for the inclusion of sexual minorities in religious communities, and writes and teaches frequently on issues of sexuality and religion. His work has been covered in the New York Times, CNN, and NPR, and he has appeared on the cover of Tikkun magazine, Religion Dispatches, and other publications. In 2009, Jay was recognized on the Forward 50 list of the fifty most influential Jewish leaders in America. Jay has been on the teaching faculties of the Human Rights Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda, and other LGBT activist organizations.

In addition to his work with Nehirim, Jay is a columnist for the Forward newspaper, the Huffington Post, Tikkun, Zeek, and Reality Sandwich magazines. He is the author of Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism, God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice and Another Word for Sky: Poems. Currently a Ph. D candidate in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, Jay holds a B.A. from Columbia, an MA from Hebrew University, an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Prior to Nehirim, Jay also founded Wasabi Systems, a multimillion-dollar software company, and Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture (www.zeek.net). In 2008-09, he spent five months on silent meditation retreat, mostly in Nepal.

Sasha T. Goldberg, Associate Director and Director of Student Programming

Sasha T. Goldberg is the Associate Director and Director of Student Programming for Nehirim. A Jewish scholar, educator, and community organizer, Sasha holds a Master’s Degree in Judaism from the Graduate Theological Union, and has taught nationally on the intersections of Judaism and various cultural, social, sexual, and religious identities. Prior to joining Nehirim in 2007, she taught grades K-12 in Religious Schools, led Jewish teen retreats, and worked with a wide variety of Jewish organizations in the Bay Area.

In addition to her work at Nehirim, Sasha has a long history of advocacy and activism; she has provided consulting on LGBT student life for her alma mater, The Latin School of Chicago, and has worked as a writing consultant for The Nyaka Aids Orphans Project, as well as for Muslims for Progressive Values. Sasha is often thinking, speaking, and writing about gender, sexuality, and identity; her most recent published work appears in the ground-breaking anthology Keep Your Wives Away From Them, and in the upcoming collection, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Currently, Sasha is honored to be a 2010-2011 Jeremiah Fellow for the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and is proud to serve as a member of the GLBT Advisory Committee for the Jewish National Fund, and as the Programming Chair for Butch Voices 2011. Sasha hails from the good Midwestern stock of the United States, and makes her home in Oakland, California.

Esther Smigel, Operations Manager

Esther Smigel is the Operations Manager of Nehirim. She is a recent graduate of Smith College, where she focused on economics and Jewish studies. At Smith, she dedicated much of her time to the Smith investment club and two socially responsible investing committees as an advocate for ethical investing. Her Jewish learning while at Smith led her to a year in Israel, where she immersed herself in the study of Jewish texts, ethics, laws and values at Machon Pardes in Jerusalem. Esther joins Nehirim excited about building queer Jewish community and forming progressive and queer interfaith connections.