Meet Our Fellows

Born in 1995 and raised in Baltimore, Noah is a high-tech salesman, (very) informal educator, and tambourine player whose life, culture and soul rotate around Jerusalem. An amateur chazzan and writer, Noah is looking forward to the chance to return to voice lessons, write new niggunim, and explore people, stories and voices from East Jerusalem, as the basis of a historical fiction about the 1947-49 war. He hopes to volunteer in teaching capacities, learn Arabic, and to engage in a digital detox diet, leaving time for more active, mindful being.

Born in 2002, Sophie was raised in Shelburne, Vermont. She graduated with a BS in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale, where she was involved with plant evolution research and Yale’s very special Jewish community. She is passionate about weaving together her commitments to Jewish tradition, care for the natural world, and community building. As a Dorot Fellow, she hopes to explore pluralism across Israeli society and the intersections between biodiversity and boundaries in the region.

Born in 1998, Ariella was raised in Westchester, New York. After a year at Midreshet Nishmat in Jerusalem, Ariella returned to the U.S. and earned her B.A. in Politics and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. In 2021, Ariella made aliyah and took over as the director of Tikvah’s gap-year program, while simultaneously earning a M.A. in Public Policy at Tel Aviv University. Since moving to Israel, Ariella has volunteered for a number of organizations, including Pantry Packers, Isha L’isha, and Matav. Ariella is hoping to spend her Dorot year working for a Bedouin education NGO in southern Israel, studying Arabic, and learning Torah in an Israeli beit midrash.

Adina Karpuj was born in Viña del Mar, Chile and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. After finishing high school, she came to Israel with the Kivunim gap year program and immediately came to call the country ‘home.’ She studied Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she got involved in intergroup dialogue facilitation and conducted research on conflict resolution. Before being accepted to the DFI, Adina worked as a producer at Israel Story, a documentary podcast that explores the diverse lived experiences of people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. She also served as the artistic director of Sipur Yerushalmi, a monthly live storytelling event series, and founded its companion podcast of the same name. In addition to her work in audio storytelling, Adina is a Hebrew-to-English translator, focusing primarily on testimonies from victims of violence in the West Bank and Gaza. She is passionate about documentary audio and plans to further develop her craft during the fellowship, while also dabbling in photography and film. In general, Adina is happiest outdoors; when she’s not working, she can often be found running, biking, hiking, or swimming in a natural body of water. She lives by the sea in Jaffa with her partner.

Born in 2000 and raised between New Jersey and suburban Philadelphia, Elisheva has long been drawn to the intersections of people, place, and story. She began her university studies in Jerusalem, where she became involved in solidarity work in the West Bank and studied ecology and permaculture at Kibbutz Lotan. She later transferred to the Joint Program at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, graduating with a BA in Archaeology and a BA in Jewish Texts. Elisheva excavated at Picuris Pueblo in New Mexico and at Poggio del Molino in Italy, gaining hands-on experience in the field. Last year she was a Shatil Social Justice Fellow, and worked with Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights and Rabbis for Human Rights, focusing on spatial justice and advocacy in Israel-Palestine. Now, as a Dorot Fellow, Elisheva is excited to dig into the nuances and political implications of archaeology as one of Israel’s favorite past-times. In her free time she loves getting outdoors for a hike or to play ultimate frisbee.

Gavi was first politicized watching her childhood Jewish community in Woodbridge, CT organize against their private utility and has been committed to building a livable future ever since. They have worked across the climate justice ecosystem in community organizing, global policy, disaster response, electoral organizing, and philanthropy. She holds a BA in Earth Science and an MS in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. Gavi lives in San Francisco, where she swims in the Pacific, hikes in the Sierras, and moonlights as an amateur florist. This year, Gavi plans to utilize her climate justice work to advance human rights and deepen in Jewish grief rituals with family.

Born in 2000 in New York, Odeya has since been lucky to have called many places home and is excited to add Tel Aviv to the list. After earning her degree in Government and Near Eastern Studies from Cornell University, she was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to the Czech Republic where she spent a year teaching English to Ukrainian refugees and high school students, researching the impacts of Russian disinformation, and playing her violin in various Czech folk bands. She worked as a dairy farmer throughout Central Europe with her two best friends and then returned to New York City to write and be Jewish at the Forward where she has been for the past two years. As a Dorot Fellow, Odeya is looking forward to filing more articles from Israel, getting her hands dirty in the fields, and studying Jewish law and literature while brushing up on her Hebrew and Arabic. She also plans to volunteer with Israel’s refugee population and legal organizations protecting their rights. Odeya is a lover of language, live music, and anything written by Philip Roth. Mostly, she just wants to be a student forever.

Born in 2001, Nava Schweig grew up in Berkeley, California and moved to Israel in 2020. Since high school she has been exploring the mind and body through her dual loves of dance and writing. After starting a degree at UC Santa Cruz, she took a break during COVID to study at Natur-a pluralistic midrasha in the Golan heights, before deciding to transfer degrees and study dance at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where she graduated in 2025. In this time, she has explored many different expressions of dance, including improvisation, choreography and somatic movement. She spent her final year researching how grief can be expressed through the body–culminating in a choreography that inquired into her own personal grief story. Nava is interested in continuing to explore the healing arts, including movement therapy, Thai massage and doula work. When she’s not dancing, she enjoys swimming in natural bodies of water, hosting Shabbat gatherings, singing with her friends and brothers, and finding ways to come back to present connection in this fast-paced world.

Born in 2003 in California, Emanuelle grew up in Minneapolis and Lexington, KY. From a young age, she found community in arts and organizing spaces, including the Kentucky Student Voice Team, jGirls+ Magazine, and Future Coalition. She earned a B.A. in English literature and minors in history and creative writing at Princeton. Also on campus, Emanuelle was president of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives, and she co-led the Office of Religious Life’s interfaith student group. On Dorot Emanuelle plans to volunteer with human rights organizations, work on a collection of poems, and delve into Jewish learning. In addition to politics and poetry, she is very passionate about arranging cheeseboards.

Born in 2001, Akiva grew up in South Florida, a natural home for his love of alligators and crocodiles. Drawn to the importance of public space and shared society, he earned his B.A. in Architecture and Arabic from Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout college, Akiva engaged in pluralistic educational initiatives—work he continued this past year as a madrich on the Hevruta gap year program at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is eager to spend his time on Dorot exploring architecture’s role in fostering democratic, pluralistic spaces and telling human-centered stories through the built environment.

Born in 1998, Boaz Willis was raised in Los Angeles with a serious stoke for riding the waves and skating the streets. After studying for two years at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, he pursued joint degrees in Midrash and Yiddish Language and Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, continuing his studies with an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics. For the past two years Willis has worked at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA, to develop experiential Jewish learning programs and teach classes on food, farming, and Jewish Wisdom. While in Israel he is excited to advance his skills as a trained Shochet, visual artist, writer, and political activist. In his free time, he enjoys growing things, experimenting with natural fermentation, piping down on the harmonica, and spending time with his wife, Kayla.