The Synagogue’s Governing Members
Marty Kress has extensive ties to the Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, one of the flagship reform temples across the country. His market vision has driven our offerings.
Jonathan Stiebel has extensive religious training. He earned a B.Sc. degree from Machon Lev in Israel where he studied the Torah and Jewish Law. Machon Lev is one of the few elite schools world-wide where rabbinical graduates attend after ordination for additional religious and practical education. He was trained for the ministry at Yeshivat Ein Tsurim in Israel; he was a protege of an Israeli religious leader, Rabbi Joel Ben-Nun who co-founded the leading school for post-ordination teaching to Israeli Rabbis about the Torah. Jonathan is an innovative educator who worked with others to create one of the few original transliterations of the entire Torah in the world. This transliteration includes all the Torah portions and Haftorah portions. He authored a graduate-level introduction to the Torah written for Jewish educators. In addition, he studied Speech Recognition and earned a Master of Computer Science degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot, Israel.
The Synagogue’s Board of Directors
Daniel Simkovitz served over five years on the Board of Directors of a modern orthodox synagogue in Brighton, called Congregation Kadimah-Toras Moshe. His children attended Maimonides modern orthodox day school. His family has social connections with people who care passionately about Judaism and technology. He is the founder, entrepreneur, software architect, and software programmer for a startup that created a groundbreaking product that revolutionized productivity for functionally blind people who could not read a piece of paper and that for decades enabled the blind to see. Upon receipt of an acquisition offer, he accepted. He seeks to support the creation of one more innovative software product that will change the world. He believes that the question of how to maintain Jewish affiliation and Jewish continuity is essential to explore and to solve.
Norman Abramovitz is a co-founder, President, Treasurer, Board of Directors. He is an architect of Virtual community and Synagogue internet-based community engagement. He worked to completely redesign the Virtual presence of Congregation Beth David, one of the two leading Silicon Valley synagogues when he was a vice-president there. He teaches bar Mitzvah and bat Mitzvah students as well as post bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah students He provides feedback and works on outreach for Shtiebel.org in California. He is a great proponent for massive immersive video teleconferencing to provide a more engaging ritual experience.
Barlow Keener is Secretary, Board of Directors. His Jewish child has learning disabilities. Barlow Keener has legal expertise in helping telecom, cable and Internet companies navigate the heavily regulated communications industry. Our Virtual Synagogue’s success will depend in part on its easy access to reasonably-priced high-bandwidth wireless connections for massive immersive video teleconferencing. Mr. Keener understands the needs of Shtiebel.org for a stable internet platform. In addition, he provides us with deeper insights into experiences of his son and other children with learning disabilities.