The Jewish Resource Center provides opportunities to UJA-Federation of New York staff and donors, as well as staff from our network of beneficiary agencies, to explore Jewish tradition, wisdom, values, and spirituality. Our goals are to strengthen Jewish identity, create community, strengthen relationships, and make Jewish tradition accessible as a resource for people to build ethical, spiritual lives and inform their actions as engaged members in the Jewish community.
The Jewish Resource Center is housed in the Educational Resources and Organizational Development Department of UJA-Federation of New York, along with the Wiener Educational Center, which offers professional development programs for individuals, institutions, and systems in the Jewish community.
Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses is a scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation, teaching courses for our lay leaders and staff, as well as those of our beneficiary agencies. She also writes about Torah and Jewish ethnicity for several anthologies and scholarly journals and for the New York Jewish Week. She lives in Manhattan with her journalist husband and their three children.
Before coming to UJA-Federation, Rabbi Cohler-Esses taught and consulted widely in the Jewish world in such organizations as Ma'ayan, Jewish Life Network, and The Curriculum Initiative, and served on the faculties of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning, the Hebrew Union College Kollel, and the Edgar M. Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel (BYFI). She became co-director of BFYI in 1998, and served in a variety of capacities until 2005. Rabbi Cohler-Esses previously received a fellowship from CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership to study with Yitz Greenberg and to teach for CLAL. She subsequently joined their faculty, teaching in pluralist settings, while pursuing advanced study of Midrash at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
She received ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1995 and is the first woman from the Syrian Jewish community to become a rabbi, as well as the first — and currently the only — person from her community to become a non-Orthodox rabbi.
At UJA-Federation of New York, Rabbi Cohler-Esses teaches diverse groups of students on subjects ranging from courses on Biblical narrative and law, Talmud, Jewish ethics, and mysticism.
Rabbi Michael Paley is a scholar-in-residence at the Jewish Resource Center of UJA-Federation of New York. He also teaches at the Columbia School of Journalism, City College, and the Ivry Prozdor High School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Newsweek magazine named him one of the 50 most influential rabbis in 2007.
Prior to his arrival at UJA-Federation, Rabbi Paley was a professor of Jewish studies and dean at Bard College, and vice-president of the Wexner Heritage Foundation, where he remains a member of the permanent faculty. For many years, Rabbi Paley served as the university chaplain at Columbia University. He also founded the Edgar M. Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, a program that brings together outstanding students from diverse Jewish backgrounds. Prior to the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, Rabbi Paley served as the Jewish chaplain at Dartmouth College.
Rabbi Paley earned his bachelor's degree at Brandeis University and graduate degrees in Jewish and Islamic philosophy and science at Temple University. He was ordained at Yeshivat B'nai Or and was a student at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Jerusalem.
At UJA-Federation, he lectures on a wide variety of subjects, including the weekly Torah portion, prayer, and Jewish history, Jewish ethics, and Islam.
