Alan Klingenstein serves as the Vice Chairman of Radial Entertainment, a global film and television distribution studio. Prior to Radial Entertainment, Al served as the Board Chairman at FilmRise, a film and television studio he co-founded in 2010. Al has also produced films through Filbert Steps Productions, which he co-founded in 1994 and where he served as President. Al’s films have won multiple awards, including the Audience Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, Best Dramatic Feature at the 2005 Austin Film Festival, and a special 100th anniversary National Board Review award in 2009. Al began his career as a securities lawyer and investment banker. He earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University and earned both a Juris Doctor (JD) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Cornell University.

Betzy Lynch has dedicated nearly her entire career to the JCC Movement, holding leadership roles at the Mandel JCC of the Palm Beaches, the JCC of Youngstown, the Memphis JCC, and the Levite JCC in Birmingham, Alabama. She is currently the CEO of the Lawrence Family JCC at the Jacobs Family Campus in La Jolla, California.

Throughout her career, Betzy has served on various boards, including synagogue boards, Planned Parenthood, and the Jewish Community Center Association. Her achievements include being a 2019 San Diego Magazine Celebrating Women Awards nominee, winning the San Diego Business Journal’s Business Women of the Year Award, and being named one of the “SD500 Most Influential People in San Diego” in 2020.

Dr. Gail Humphries, Dean, College of Fellows of the American Theater-current; Likhachev/ Yeltsin Cultural Fellow, St. Petersburg, Russia; Fulbright Senior Scholar, Prague, CZ; Dean Emerita, Stephens College; Professor Emerita, American University.
Dr. Gail Humphries’ broad experience encompasses academic administration, curricula and program development, fundraising, and the direction of over 180 productions, including drama, musical theatre, children’s theatre, the classics, and new works. She has taught master classes in theatre and arts administration and directed in countries including Greece, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, the UK, and the Czech Republic. She has served on multiple boards for non-profit arts organizations. Gail has been awarded several outstanding teaching, faculty, and directing awards, and has published articles in multiple professional journals.
She is the coeditor and contributing author to the book titled Arts Integration in Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (Intellect Books Ltd. 2016; 2018). She has contributed chapters to two books published by Routledge -The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations and Traces of the Holocaust (2012) and The Courage To Fight Violence Against Women (2018). She has developed curricula and new degrees in arts administration and arts education for various colleges and universities. Finally, her presentations have included nearly 100 panel discussions, workshops, and keynote addresses at various conferences ranging from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Association for Arts Administration Educators, to the International Psychoanalytical Association and the Women’s Bar Association of Maryland.
She is currently co-editing and contributing to new books with Dr. Karen Berman – Stories of the Holocaust Art for Healing and Renewal Vol. 1 On Stage and in Concert; Vol. 2 On Screen and in the Gallery., to be published by IPbooks.

In his role as CBRE’s Chairman of Global Brokerage, Stephen Siegel advises major corporations and property owners on a broad range of real estate strategies. Widely regarded as one of the industry’s most talented and prolific professionals, he has been called by the media “a powerhouse,” “an icon,” “a game changer” and “the most legendary and revered broker still plying the trade in NY.”

Prior to the merger with CBRE, as Chairman and CEO of Insignia/ESG, Mr. Siegel was largely responsible for masterminding the firm’s expansion nationwide as well as throughout EMEA and the Americas. He also managed a group that completed approximately $2 billion in co-investments in a wide range of U.S. real estate portfolios across property types. Mr. Siegel initially rose to prominence in the industry at Cushman & Wakefield, where he became President and CEO at age 37.

Renowned for his philanthropy, Mr. Siegel has been called by The Wall Street Journal “the most generous person in the industry.” He sits on numerous nonprofit boards. He was endowed a fellowship at the Cardozo School of Law. He received honorary doctorates from Baruch College, Yeshiva University, Monmoth University and St. Thomas Aquinas College. He has been honored by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Lower East Side Tenement Museum and Israel Bonds. He was also celebrated for his contributions to the Young Women’s Leadership Network’s College Bound Initiative along with fellow honorees Queen Latifah and Danny Meyer.

Frequently quoted in major newspapers, Mr. Siegel has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, LEADERS Magazine, the Real Deal and recently presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who for his accomplishments and prominence in his profession. He is regularly among the Commercial Observer’s Power 100, was named by Crain’s as one of the 100 Most Influential Business Leaders in New York City. He was featured in the Urban Land Institute’s Leadership Legacies and the best-selling Commercial Real Estate Brokers Who Dominate. He has been honored with Commercial Property News’ Lifetime Achievement Award and has received prestigious industry awards from REBNY and New York University’s Real Estate Institute.

Wolf Gruner holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies, is Professor of History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles since 2008 and is the Founding Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research since 2014.

He is a specialist in the history of the Holocaust and in comparative genocide studies. He received his PhD in History in 1994 from the Technical University Berlin as well as his Habilitation in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Women’s Christian University Tokyo, and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin, as well as the Desmond E. Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University in St. Louis.

He is the author of ten books on the Holocaust, among them “Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims”, with Cambridge University Press (paperback 2008), as well as over 60 academic articles and book chapters. He also coedited two books, one of them, the translated updated book “The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945” was published in 2015. In 2015, Gruner published on the discrimination against the indigenous population in post-colonial Bolivia the book „Parias de la Patria“. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia 1825-1890”, in Spanish with Plural Editores, Bolivia.

Gruner’s most recent book deals with the persecution of the Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and their responses 1939-45 (Wallstein, Göttingen, Germany, 2016). This book, soon to be published in English and Czech, received the award for most outstanding German studies in humanities and social sciences in 2017, the Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association 2017 for the best book in Holocaust Studies in 2015-2016 and was a finalist for the Yad Vashem International Book prize for Holocaust Research 2017 in the best book in 2015 and 2016.

He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (since 2017) and the International Academic Advisory board of the Center for the Research on the Holocaust in Germany at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, Jerusalem (since 2012), and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Genocide Research (since 2010).

Michael Berenbaum is a writer, lecturer, and teacher consulting in the conceptual development of museums and the development of historical films. He is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust at the American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) where he is also a Professor of Jewish Studies. In the past he has served as the Weinstein Gold Distinguished Visiting Professor at Chapman University, the Podlich Distinguished Visitor at Claremont-McKenna College, the Ida E. King Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at Richard Stockton College for 1999–2000 and the Strassler Family Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust Studies at Clark University in 2000.

He was the Executive Editor of the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica that reworked, transformed, improved, broadened and deepened, the now classic 1972 work and consists of 22 volumes, sixteen million words with 25,000 individual contributions to Jewish knowledge. The EJ won the prestigious Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association for the Outstanding Reference Work of 2006.

For the three years, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. He was the Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Hymen Goldman Adjunct Professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. From 1988–93 he served as Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, overseeing its creation. He also served as Director of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, Opinion Page Editor of the Washington Jewish Week and Deputy Director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust where he authored its Report to the President. He has previously taught at Wesleyan University, Yale University and has served as a visiting professor at three of the major Washington area universities — George Washington University, The University of Maryland, and American University.

Berenbaum is the author and editor of twenty books, scores of scholarly articles, and hundreds of journalistic pieces. Of his book, After Tragedy and Triumph, Raul Hilberg said, “All those who want to read only one book about the condition of Jewry in 1990 would do well to choose Michael Berenbaum… In his description of contemporary Jewish thought, he sacrifices neither complexity nor lucidity.” Charles Silberman praised The World Must Know as “a majestic and profoundly moving history of the Holocaust…It is must reading for anyone who would like to be human in the post Holocaust world.” The Village Voice praised Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp with, “The scholarship, broad and deep, makes this the definitive book on one of our century’s defining horrors.”

His most recent books include: Not Your Father’s Antisemitism, A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of Its Survivors and After the Passion Has Passed: American Religious Consequences, a collection of essays on Jews, Judaism and Christianity, Relgious Tolerance and Pluralism occasioned by the controversy that swirled around Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion. Johns Hopkins University Press has recently published a second edition of The World Must Know. He is also the editor of Murder Most Merciful: Essays on the Moral Conundrum Occasioned by Sigi Ziering The Trial of Herbert Bierhoff.

Among his other works are A Mosaic of Victims: Non Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel, and Witness to the Holocaust: An Illustrated Documentary History of the Holocaust in the Words of Its Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders. He was co-editor on several works, including The Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (with John Roth), The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined (with Abraham Peck), and most recently, The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? (with Michael Neufeld). He is the author of A Promise to Remember co-editor of Martyrdom: The History of an Idea.

In film, his work as Co-Producer of One Survivor Remembers: The Gerda Weissman Klein Story was recognized with an Academy Award, an Emmy Award and the Cable Ace Award. He was the historical consultant on The Shoah Foundation’s Documentary, The Last Days that won an Academy Award for the best feature-length documentary of 1998.

Over the past several years, Berenbaum was a historical consultant or chief historical consultant for:

• HBO’s Conspiracy, recently nominated for 10 Emmy awards,
• NBC’s Uprising
• The History Channel’s The Holocaust: The Untold Story, which won the CINE Golden Eagle Award and a Silver Medal at the US International Film and Video Festival.
• About Face, a film on German Jewish refugees who fought for the Allies During World War II.

He was the executive producer, writer, and historian for a film entitled Desperate Hours on the Holocaust in Turkey, which was broadcast on Public Television in the fall and is a consultant and interviewee on several broadcasts, most recently, Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, which was broadcast on the BBC in England and on AMC in the United States. He was Executive Producer of Swimming in Auschwitz, the story of 6 women Holocaust survivors, which appeared on PBS in the spring of 2009. He also was the commentator for the National Geographic’s Master’s of Death and Scrapbook from Hell two documentaries, the first on the Einsatzgruppen, the Mobile Killing Units, and the second on the Auschwitz album of the perpetrators.

Berenbaum was the conceptual developer on the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center that recently opened in Skokie, and played a similar function as conceptual developer and chief curator of the Belzec Memorial at the site of the Death Camp. He is currently at work on the Memorial Museum to Macedonia Jewry in Skopje.

For his work in journalism, he won the Simon Rockower Memorial Award of the American Jewish Press Association three times in three different categories during a two-year period. He has been featured on Nightline and the Today Show as well as National Public Television.

Berenbaum takes special pleasure in his work as a teacher. His course at Georgetown was named by the student newspaper as one of the ten most important courses in the University. Among his former students was the famed American entertainer, Pearl Bailey, who wrote of Berenbaum: “The wisdom I gained from his class is priceless. He is young, aggressive, tough, wise as some sages of yore, and as brilliant as a diamond. When class ended, you felt filled, drained, and filled again.” (Pearl Bailey, Between You and Me)

Berenbaum is a graduate of Queens College (BA, 1967) and Florida State University (Ph.D., 1975), and also attended The Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Boston University. He has won numerous fellowships including the Danforth Fellowship, the George Wise Fellowship at Tel Aviv University, and the Charles E. Merrill Fellowship at FSU. Berenbaum was an elected fellow of the Society for Values in Higher Education. He was given a Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) from Nazareth College in 1995 and a Doctor of Humane Letters (honoris causa) from Denison University

He is married to Melissa Patack Berenbaum, who is the Vice-President and General Manager of the Motion Picture Association of America, California Group. He is the father of four children: Ilana, a Brown University honors graduate, who was ordained as a Rabbi by the University of Judaism in May 2001 and is working on her Ph.D. in Midrash as UCLA; Lev, who graduated from Georgetown University and is a Washington-based businessman; Joshua, born in December 1998; and Mira, born in May, 2000.

Doug Reside joined NYPL in 2011 as digital curator for the performing arts. In his current position, he manages all aspects of the Theatre Division’s collections and public services. Prior to joining NYPL, Reside served on the staff of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. He has published and spoken on topics related to theater history, literature, and digital humanities, and has managed several large grant-funded projects on these topics. Reside is especially interested in the use of digital forensic tools to study the creative process. He received a PhD in English from the University of Kentucky

Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel is the founder and executive director of the Remember the Women Institute, a not-for-profit organization based in New York City since 1997 that carries out and encourages research and cultural projects that integrate women into history. Her own focus is on Jewish women, especially women during the Holocaust.

She is the author or editor of six books on various aspects of the Holocaust. Her book Mielec, Poland: The Shtetl That Became a Nazi Concentration Camp (Gefen Publishers, 2012) is partially based on research carried out as a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, in 2006. She is also the author of The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), a National Jewish Book Awards finalist in the Holocaust Studies and Women's Studies categories. This book was published as a paperback in 2006, in Hebrew, 2007, and in Portuguese, 2009.

She is co-editor of Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2010), part of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's series on Jewish women and a National Jewish Book Awards finalist in the Women's Studies category. She is the editor of a new and expanded edition of the memoir of the sister of former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story (Syracuse University Press, 2007). She is the author of Never Too Late To Remember: The Politics Behind New York City's Holocaust Museum (Holmes & Meier, 1996); and The Outraged Conscience: Seekers of Justice for Nazi War Criminals in America (SUNY Press, 1985, electronic edition, 2012).

She is co-author of three educational handbooks, Women, Theatre, and the Holocaust Resource Handbook (2015), Teaching and Education with Gender Equality in Childhood and Adolescence: A Practical Guide for Teachers) (1996) (in Portuguese as Ensino e Educação com Igualdade de Gênero na Infância e na Adolescência: Guia Prática para Educadores e Educadoras), and  Nazi War Criminals in America: Facts...Action (1981)

She curated an innovative exhibit and authored an accompanying catalog entitled Women of Ravensbrück, Portraits of Courage: Art by Julia Terwilliger for the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, and also curated a permanent exhibit about rescue to Oswego, NY, entitled "Bitter Hope: From Holocaust to Haven," at the New York State Museum, Albany, as well as a temporary exhibit about Gemma La Guardia Gluck for Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York.

Dr. Saidel has written and lectured internationally on the Holocaust for more than thirty-five years, presenting lectures and conference papers throughout the United States, as well as in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. She has also organized conference panels and workshops, including the groundbreaking workshop, “Beyond Anne Frank: Teaching about Women and the Holocaust,” at a Conference on Teaching the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (2006): various panels at the Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust; the first session dealing with women and the Holocaust (2005) and with sexual violence during the Holocaust (2009) at the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem; the first session dealing with sexual violence during the Holocaust, the Association for Jewish Studies (2010); and a special panel at a Women and the Holocaust conference in Warsaw, Poland (2011).

She has also worked in television and film, serving as a consultant for and appearing in Where Birds Don't Sing produced by Rosemarie Reed and Triangles: Witnesses of the Holocaust produced by Ann P. Meredith. She was also a consultant for other documentary films about women and the Holocaust, including Screaming Silence produced by Ronnie Sarnat and Return to a Burning House by Anna Gruskova and Mirka Molnar Lachka, as well as some still in production. In the late 1970's she produced and moderated From Hitler to Uncle Sam: How American Intelligence Used Nazi War Criminals, a television documentary series, as well as creating, producing, and hosting Heritage and Destiny on the Albany, New York ABC-TV affiliate.

Dr. Saidel's articles have appeared in print and on-line media that includes the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Jerusalem Post, The Forward, Reform Judaism, Times of Israel, Women's eNews, Catholic News Service, Newsday, Women's Review of Books, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, Lilith, and Midstream. She served as a correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, 1978-1988; Brazil,1992-2000) and Catholic News Service (Brazil Correspondent,1988-1995), and wrote hundreds of by-lined articles appearing in newspapers serviced by these international wire services.

She has also contributed chapters to such books as Life, Death and Sacrifice: Women and Family in the Holocaust (ed. Esther Hertzog, Gefen Publishing, 2008); The Legacy of the Holocaust: Women and the Holocaust (eds. Zygmunt Mazur, Jay T. Lees, Arnold Krammer and Wladyslaw Witalisz, Jagiellonian University Press, 2007); Lessons and Legacies, Volume VII, The Holocaust in International Perspective (ed. Dagmar Herzog, Northwestern University Press, 2006); Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work, Volume 2 (ed. S. Lillian Kremer, New York, Routledge, 2003); Women in the Holocaust: Responses, Insights and Perspectives (ed. Marcia Littell, Merion Westfield Press International, 2001); The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, Volume 3 (eds. John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, London, Palgrave, 2001); Yad Vashem Studies XXVII (ed. David Silberklang, Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, Spring 2000); Remembrance, Repentance, Reconciliation: The 25th Anniversary Volume of the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches (ed. Douglas F. Tobler, Lanham, University Press of America, 1998); Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XXXIX (London, 1994); Ibero Amerikanisches Archiv; and Encyclopaedia Judaica Decennial Book; as well as volumes of various conference proceedings.

She was a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Visiting Scholar for a seminar on Cultural Responses to the Holocaust in America and Abroad, Brandeis University, 1996. She represented the Center for the Study of Women and Gender, University of São Paulo, at the NGO Forum on Women at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995. She won the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Musher Publication Prize to facilitate the publication of a doctoral dissertation on Jewish life, 1994; and the Meinhart Speilman Dissertation Bequest, City College, Jewish Studies, 1992. She was a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of São Paulo, Brazil for some twenty years and has also been an Associated Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Women and Society, The Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York; a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar; and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Philadelphia Center on the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights. She was a member of the National Commission for Catholic-Jewish Religious Dialogue in Brazil, the first woman appointed to the commission by the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops. Among other honors, in 2015 she was named one of 21 Leaders for the 21^st Century by Women's eNews.

A native of Glens Falls, NY, Dr. Saidel received her PhD in Political Science from The Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York. She served for nine years as a special assistant to the Democratic leader of the New York State Senate, with responsibilities that included Holocaust education and planning for the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. She currently divides her time among Jerusalem, New York City, and São Paulo.

Janet E. Rubin, Ph.D. is a respected scholar, theatrical director, teacher, consultant, and arts educator. She currently teaches for the Visual and Performing Arts, Humanities, and Speech Departments at Eastern Florida State College. In addition to teaching and directing at EFSC, Janet also directs for Surfside Playhouse in Cocoa Beach, Florida, oversees their youth theatre program, and serves on their board. Rubin has authored or contributed to ten books, published numerous articles, and received funding for various research projects. She frequently presents her work at conferences around the world. She has served as Educator in Residence at the University of Mysore (India) and at Ballarat College of Advanced Education (Victoria, Australia). She has served as President of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, a national professional organization for theatre educators and artists. As a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Rubin engaged in research which resulted in publications on using drama to teach about the Holocaust. Her books include Teaching About the Holocaust Through Drama and Voices: Plays for Studying the Holocaust, along with the co-authored books, Images from the Holocaust and Learning About the Holocaust: Literature and Other Resources for Young People.

Formerly, Janet taught at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan where, during her twenty-seven year career, she was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Earl L.Warrick Award for Excellence in Research, the Rush Distinguished Lectureship, and the Barstow Humanities Seminar Directorship. Among many professional endeavors, she has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Michigan arts and humanities councils. Dr. Rubin received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.

 *Of blessed memory-Theodore Bikel (Playwright and Performer) has been an American citizen since 1961. He was born in Vienna in 1924 and left for Israel (then Palestine) at the age of 13. In 1946, he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and graduated with honors. He appeared in several West End plays including A Streetcar Named Desire under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier and The Love of Four Colonels by Peter Ustinov. In the U.S. his roster of memorable stage performances includes Tonight in Samarkand, The Rope Dancers, The Lark, The Sound of Music (in which he created the role of Baron von Trapp), I Do I Do, The Sunshine Boys, My Fair Lady, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well, Etc., Zorba and Fiddler on the Roof, in which he has played the role of Tevye more than 2,000 times over the past 37 years. Theodore Bikel has made more than 35 films, amongst which are The African Queen, The Enemy Below, The Russians are Coming, My Fair Lady, I Want to Live and The Defiant Ones, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

Mr. Bikel has also starred in virtually every top dramatic show on TV and received an Emmy Award in 1988. He is also an accomplished concert artist and raconteur, giving numerous concerts and lectures each year, including his most recent appearances at the Jewish Music Festival in Cracow, Poland. He has recorded 20 albums, two in the last two years. Theodore Bikel has been active for many years in Actors’ Equity Association, serving from 1973 to 1982 as Vice President and as President. He also held the post of Vice President of the International Federation of Actors (FIA) from 1981 until 1991. He is currently President of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America (4A’s), a Board Member of the Americans for the Arts (formerly ACA) and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to serve a five-year term on the National Council for the Arts. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Hartford, Seton Hall and the Hebrew Union College. His updated autobiography Theo, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Throughout his career, Theo Bikel has felt a particular responsibility to Jewish life and to the Jewish community. His numerous albums of Jewish folk music, his concerts and theater performances; his co-founding of Israel’s Cameri Theatre; his leadership in the Soviet Jewry movement and in the American Jewish Congress have distinguished him as a Jewish activist. Theo’s profound impact on Jewish culture is also evidenced by his leading role within the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. He is passionate about the survival of the Yiddish language and devotes much energy to insure its continued existence on the Jewish cultural scene.

Mr. Bikel’s latest accomplishment is as author and star of Sholom Aleichem: Laughter through Tears (www.laughterthroughtears.org) which has been performed in Washington, D.C., South Florida, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. The production has now been adapted and transformed into a film starring Mr. Bikel.