Meet Our Fellows

Born in 1994 in the suburb of Paris, Morane obtained law degrees from King’s College and the Sorbonne, as well as an LLM from the University of Amsterdam and Columbia Law School. She is currently an active member of the French and Israeli bar associations. In addition to her legal career, Morane is a passionate Jewish educator and artist. Her focus lies in Jewish environmentalism, music, and ceramics, having acquired Jewish knowledge and experience through institutions such as Drisha, Pardes, Eden Village Camp, Urban Adamah, and Nachum Goldman.

Born in 1998, Maya Bickel grew up in Maryland and spent a formative eighth grade year in Jerusalem. She has a B.A. in Middle East studies from Columbia University, including a semester spent studying colloquial Arabic in Jordan. After graduating, Maya moved to Jerusalem to work as a research assistant studying water insecurity in a community in the West Bank. Maya also spent three months living in Masafer Yatta and documenting human rights abuses with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Last year she worked at Bimkom, a planning rights NGO, as a New Israel Fund fellow. In the past two years in Jerusalem Maya has become an anti-occupation activist, working with a number of Israeli and international activist collectives. She speaks Hebrew and Arabic fluently. 

Rena Branson is a composer, ritual leader, and educator who uplifts personal and collective healing through song. They founded A Queer Nigun Project in 2018, which organizes singing events for LGBTQIA+ folks and collaborates with rabbinic chaplains to support people in the Jewish community who are incarcerated. Rena moved to Philadelphia in 2019 for the Rising Song Jewish Music Residency and has spent the past three years serving as the cantorial soloist at Congregation Leyv Ha-Ir. They’re excited to spend the upcoming year in the Dorot Fellowship studying dance and other somatic practices to heal intergenerational trauma. You can hear Rena’s original album and learn more about their work at renabranson.com. 

Born in 1997, and raised in Evanston, Illinois, Ayal earned a Bachelors in Cognitive Science from McGill University in Montréal, Canada. His studies have led him to a wide range of work experiences in the healthcare and nonprofit worlds. From working at a mobile urgent care in Maui, Hawaii during the COVID-19 pandemic, to helping develop the first peer-to-peer matching platform for caretakers of loved ones living with early-onset dementia, Ayal is always looking to contribute to projects that improve the lives of others. Having been a full-time caretaker in his early 20s, Ayalhas a profound reverence for the practice of showing up and choosing to love and be present in the face of illness and loss. He is conversant in Spanish and French. 

Born in 1994 in the US, Kai Jack was raised in Norway and earned degrees in Double Bass Performance from the Academy of Music and Drama, Gothenburg University (B.Mus. 2015-18) and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (M.Mus. 2018-21). During his Bachelor’s Degree, Kai helped create the Dream Orchestra, a youth project primarily for kids from refugee and migrant backgrounds, where he volunteered extensively as an instrument instructor as well as conductor, arranger and organizer. After finishing his Master’s Degree in Jerusalem, he began volunteering with Israel’s African asylum seeker community using music as a tool for social and individual empowerment. Kai has been freelancing with orchestras and ensembles around Israel since 2018 and was acting co-principal double bassist in the Israel Camerata Orchestra for the 2022-2023 season. During the covid-19 pandemic he founded the Mediterranean Double Bass Forum, an online platform that aims to connect and inspire young musicians around the world, with a special focus on bass communities around the Mediterranean region, through online workshops, lectures and masterclasses. During the same period, he founded the Jerusalem Double Bass Quartet, an ensemble that strives to showcase the double bass’ wide range of colors to an even broader range of listeners. He has taught at both Israeli and Palestinian conservatories and firmly believes in music’s ability to be more than art but to be a tool for social integration, to foster the feelings of belonging and ownership, and to impart life-skills like leadership, resilience, cooperation and problem-solving. 

Born in 2000, Ikenna was raised in Torrance, CA and attended Yale University, where he earned a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry. Whilst there, he co-founded an organization to address inequity in medicine and science, and performed with the semi-professional a cappella group Magevet – the name is indeed a story worth asking about! Since graduation, he made the move to Israel, spending time studying at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa, as well as volunteering with a myriad of communities in the north of Israel.  Ikenna is fluent in Hebrew and Japanese, and is conversant in Arabic. 

Born in 1999, Hannah was raised in Phoenix, Arizona and earned her B.A. in history with a minor in economics and certificate in Hebrew from Harvard College. After graduating, Hannah was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s American Statecraft Program, where she researched and wrote about practical solutions to a range of foreign policy challenges, paying close attention to the limits and constraints on American power. Throughout college, Hannah was involved with Harvard Hillel and an initiative to remotely support Israeli and Palestinian civil society organizations. Hannah worked in various research positions throughout college, where she supported authors and academics in their projects on topics including US military operations, tort law, and Jewish emigration trends. Hannah loves teaching and promoting civic engagement, and volunteered at a refugee shelter in Berlin, Germany as an IsraAID fellow in 2019 and traveled all over the world to staff Harvard Model Congress conferences throughout college. 

Born in 1999, Nate was raised in Newton, Massachusetts and attended Tufts University, where he earned a B.A. in English, with minors in Arabic and Biological Anthropology. After graduating, Nate moved to Jerusalem to work as an editor at +972 Magazine through the NIF/Shatil Social Justice Fellowship. There, he profiled members of Knesset and wrote about the influence of conservative American politics on Israel’s ascendant right wing. In addition to his interest in the political world, Nate has been an avid cook from a young age and, during his senior year of college, completed an independent study focusing on the role of food and cooking in human evolutionary history, designing and carving stone tools and recreating some of the earliest forms of alcohol made by humans. Nate is passionate about building community and hopes to use both his language and his culinary skills to create micro-communities centered on shared language and delicious food. He is fluent in Hebrew and conversant in Arabic.

Born in 1993, Aron was raised in New York City, New York and received a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Creative Writing from Princeton University. After graduating, he worked in data science and community organizing. This past year, he completed his fourth year of rabbinical school at Hebrew College, from which he is taking a year-long leave to do the Dorot Fellowship. Since 2021, he has also been studying with the Yashrut Institute. His poetry and non-fiction writing have appeared in The Shore, Curator Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. 

Born in 1999 and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Elana studied at The University of Michigan and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she earned a BA in Social Theory and Practice with a concentration in Food Sustainability. During this time, she conducted research on sustainable food pedagogy and implemented several large-scale sustainability initiatives within her summer camp and U of M campus communities through the Farber Farm at Tamarack Camps, Michigan’s Sustainable Food Project, Hillel, and in interfaith communities as a Graham Sustainability Scholar. Elana has also served as a peer counselor for U of M’s Counseling and Psychological Services offering mental health support to fellow students. Since graduating, she has lived in Jerusalem, working as the Student Coordinator for the gap-year program, KIVUNIM, traveling to over 10 countries exploring world Jewry and “expanding world consciousness”. Currently based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Elana works as the Recruitment Associate for The Nachshon Project, where she is an alumna of their undergraduate fellowship. 

Ali is currently directing a summer internship program at ITIM, a nonprofit working to create a more respectful and responsive religious establishment in Israel. Previously, she served as a Jewish Service Corps fellow at JDC Israel’s department for social mobility where she worked with vulnerable Israeli youth. She has had the privilege to study Torah in multiple wonderful institutions, most recently at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a BA in philosophy. 

Born in 1995, Ari Ziegler was raised in Orinda, CA, and earned a B.A. in Sociology & Anthropology from the University of Puget Sound. While in school, Ari spent her summers working at Camp Tawonga, a Jewish summer camp located just outside of Yosemite National Park. It was at Tawonga that Ari began to explore the meaning and depth of her Jewish identity. Her love of the outdoors and community building stems from her early days at Camp and is shown in the strength of her friendships. Upon graduating from Puget Sound, Ari spent extensive time in Nepal, working on sustainable building projects near the epicenter of the 2015 earthquake. When she’s not traveling, Ari has worked as a crisis text line volunteer and a fourth-grade teacher. She has worked as a Wilderness Therapy Field Guide in Colorado and Utah and absolutely loves working with youth in outdoor settings. Ari is passionate about expanding access to the outdoors and utilizing natural spaces as a form of healing and connection to the land and oneself.