ABOUT OUR ADVISORS

Michael Berenbaum is a writer, lecturer, and teacher. He is an adjunct Professor of Theology at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and served as the Strassler Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust Studies at Clark University in 2000. For three years, he was President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. He was Director of the U.S. Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Berenbaum is the author and editor of twelve books, scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic pieces. 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, which won an Academy Award for the best feature length documentary of 1998.  In 2001, Berenbaum was historical consultant for HBO’s Conspiracy, NBC’s Uprising, and 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.

Dr. Clayborne Carson is Professor of History and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.  He is the editor of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. I-VI; The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.; and the author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s.  Dr. Carson served as senior advisor for “Eyes on the Prize,” the fourteen-part, award-winning, public television series on the civil rights movement, as well as co-editing the Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. In addition, he served as historical advisor for “Freedom on My Mind,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 1995, as well as for “Chicano!” (1996) and “Blacks and Jews” (1997).

Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Judaic Studies at Dartmouth University. Her numerous publications include a prize-winning monograph, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christians, Nazis and the Bible (Princeton University Press). She co-edited Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, and has written extensively on feminism and Judaism. She edited and wrote the biographical introduction to Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Prof. Heschel also edited the classic collection, On Being a Jewish Feminist. She was a fellow at the National Humanities Center, and since 1999 has served on the academic advisory committee of the Research Center of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. She has been a commentator on the Jim Lehrer News Hour and a contributor to The Nation, Dissent, Commentary, and Tikkun magazines.

Edward K. Kaplan is Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities and chair of the Program in Religious Studies at Brandeis University where he is also Research Associate at the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. He is the Co-author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness and author of Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America (winner of a 2008 National Jewish Book Award) and Holiness In Words: Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Poetics Of Piety. He has published extensively on Thomas Merton as well, including the introduction to and four chapters in Merton and Judaism, based on a conference of the same name that he organized.

John C. Merkle is Professor of Theology at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, and the Associate Director of the Jay Phillips Center for Jewish-Christian Learning.  He is the author of The Genesis Of Faith: The Depth Theology Of Abraham Joshua Heschel, and editor of Abraham Joshua Heschel: Exploring His Life And Thought and  Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters With Jews And Judaism.

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Alan Berliner (Creative Consultant) is a recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Jerome Foundation Fellowships, and has received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has won three Emmy Awards and received six Emmy nominations.

Berliner's experimental documentary films, First Cousin Once Removed, Wide Awake, The Sweetest Sound, Nobody’s Business, and Intimate Stranger have been broadcast all over the world, and received awards, prizes, and retrospectives at many major international film festivals. Over the years, his films have become part of the core curriculum for documentary filmmaking and film history classes at universities worldwide. All of his films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

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Praying With My Legs  

Praying With My Legs

The Radically Amazing Life & Times                               of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

A FILM BY STEVE BRAND