ABOUT US

RABBI JONAH PESNER
Rabbi Jonah Pesner is the founding Director of Just Congregations. He works with synagogues pursuing social justice across the country and teaches on all three campuses of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. As a congregational rabbi at Temple Israel in Boston, he developed the Fain Award winning “Ohel Tzedek / Tent of Justice” social action initiative. Engaging hundreds of members, Temple Israel joined other congregations and organizations in successful campaigns for health care access, affordable housing, public education, gay and lesbian rights, nursing care workers rights, and living wage. Most recently, as a leader of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, Rabbi Pesner was the chair of the GBIO effort in the Massachusetts “Affordable Care Today!” coalition that successfully secured health care for more than half a million uninsured residents of the Commonwealth. Rabbi Pesner serves on the boards of the Jewish Memorial Hospital in Roxbury and the Jewish Organizing Initiative. He has served on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Task Force on Congregation-Based Community Organizing of the Jewish Funds for Justice. Rabbi Pesner has written several journal articles, and wrote a chapter entitled “Redemption for Radicals” in the newly published anthology, “Righteous Indignation.” He was the Meyer W. Nathans Scholar at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where he was ordained in 1997. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Rabbi Pesner is married to Boston attorney, Dana S. Gershon. Together they have four daughters, Juliet, Noa, Bobbie and Cate.

LILA FOLDES
Lila Foldes is the Assistant Director of Just Congregations. Lila works to increase and deepen the participation of Reform synagogues across the country in community organizing across lines of faith, race, and class. Previously, she worked for two years as the Assistant Director of Jewish Organizing for the Jewish Funds for Justice. She trained as a community organizer with the Organizing Apprenticeship Project in Minnesota. Her past organizing experience includes three and a half years as a community organizer in Minnesota. She graduated cum laude from Barnard College.

JULIE CHIZEWER WEILL
Julie Chizewer Weill is the Coordinator of Institutional Advancement for Just Congregations. She has worked to strengthen synagogue life and in the field of Jewish social justice for the past 15 years as a staff member of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago, and both the Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) in New York. While at JFSJ she initiated its program to engage synagogues in congregation-based community organizing and planned the first-ever national gathering of involved congregations. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and received a Masters Degree in Social Work and a Certificate in Jewish Communal Service from Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work. She and her husband, Rabbi Jeffrey Weill, live in Deerfield, IL and are the parents of Betsy, Ruthie, and Samuel.