Chabad Resource Center of Columbia University, Inc.

Faculty Advisory Board

 Zvi Galil (Emeritus) Dean of the Georgia Tech College of Computing

Zvi Galil is the new Dean of Georgia Tech's prestigious School pf Computing.  He is the former President of Tel Aviv University and before that the Dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University and served as the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Mathematical Methods and Computer Science. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he was elected for his contributions to the design and analysis of algorithms and for leadership in computer science and engineering. His main research interests are in the design and analysis of algorithms, computational complexity and cryptography.  He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the international learned society of leaders from academia, the arts, business, and public affairs that conducts projects and studies responsive to the needs and problems of society.

He has written over 200 scientific papers, edited 5 books, and has given more than 150 lectures in 20 countries. Dean Galil has served as editor-in-chief of two journals and as the chief computer science adviser in the United States to the Oxford University Press. Born in Israel, he was educated at Tel Aviv University and received his doctorate from Cornell University. 

"Chabad is one of the most honorable, sincere, and uplifting places on campus. To these I attribute the magnitude of their success in reaching out to students and faculty of diverse backgrounds. I have long supported the unparalleled work of Rabbi Yonah and Keren Blum at Chabad at Columbia and am honored to be a part of the team."

~ President Zvi Galil Tel Aviv University

Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D.

Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D. is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law, and Director, Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics, Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University; and an affiliated faculty member, Columbia Law School. He was previously A.F. Zeleznik Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry; Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry; and Director of the Law and Psychiatry Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is the author of many articles and books on law and ethics in clinical practice, including four that were awarded the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award from the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Dr. Appelbaum is Past President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, and serves as Chair of the APA Council on Psychiatry and Law. He was previously Chair of the APA Commission on Judicial Action and a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mental Health and the Law.   He is currently a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mandatory Outpatient Treatment. He has received the APA’s Isaac Ray Award for "outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence," was the Fritz Redlich Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Dr. Appelbaum is a graduate of Columbia College, received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed his residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston. 

"My wife, Dede, and I have seen the terrific work that Chabad does around the world, from Beijing to Bangkok to Boston. That's why it's a particular pleasure to support the work of Rabbi Yonah and Keren Blum in bringing yiddishkeit to Jews of all backgrounds here at Columbia with Chabad's trademark warmth and acceptance."

~ Paul S. Appelbaum, MD
Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law
Director, Division of Psychiatry, Law and Ethics

  Professor Samuel Freedman 

Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning writer and professor. A former reporter for The New York Times, he is the author of six acclaimed books.  A tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman was named the nation's outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists. His class in book-writing has developed more than 30 authors, editors, and agents, and it has been featured in Publishers Weekly and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a board member of Institute for American Values and the Jewish Book Council. He has spoken at the Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and UCLA, among other venues, and has appeared on National Public Radio, CNN, and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.  To learn more, visit Professor Freedman's website www.samuelfreedman.com

"There's a famous aphorism that home is where they always have to take you in. I think of Chabad as that kind of always-welcoming, non-judgmental place for Jews anywhere in the world. And in our corner of the world, or at least of Morningside Heights, Chabad Resource Center of Columbia is the open door."

~Professor Samuel G. Freedman

  Professor Ester Fuchs

Professor Fuchs's main research interests are in the areas of urban politics and policy, including fiscal policy, New York City politics, work force development and community building, youth development and social welfare policy, American government and policy, political parties and elections, and statistical analysis.

Professor Fuchs received a BA from Queens College, an MA from Brown University, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago. She has also taught at Barnard College and the University of Notre Dame. She was Founding Director of Columbia University Center for Urban Research and Policy and Chair of the Barnard Columbia College Urban Studies Program.

From January 2002-January 2006 Professor served as Special Advisor to the Mayor for Governance and Strategic Planning in the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of the City of New York. As Special Advisor, she was responsible for developing and implementing reform initiatives for City agencies as well as advising on new, innovative and efficient ways to deliver public services. While at City Hall, Dr. Fuchs coordinated three significant mayoral initiatives--restructuring the City's delivery of Out-of-School Time (OST) programs; the Integrated Human Services System Project to streamline the screening and eligibility determination processes, case management, and policy development and planning functions within and across the 13 human services agencies through the use of technology; and coordinated the merger of the Department of Employment with the Department of Small Business Services to better link the City's workforce development programs with the needs of City employers. She assisted the agency in restructuring and expanding its one-stop system and designing workforce development services that link the unemployed to sustainable jobs.

From August 2005 through November 2005 Dr. Fuchs took leave from her position at City Hall to join Mayor Bloomberg's reelection campaign as a policy advisor for the second term agenda.

In August 2004 Dr. Fuchs was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to serve as Chair of the Charter Revision Commission. Fuchs was the first woman to serve in this capacity. The Commission was charged with reviewing the entire Charter, soliciting public input, and in June 2005 issued a final report outlining findings and recommendations to amend and revise the Charter. New York City voters overwhelmingly approved 2 ballot questions put forth by the Commission in the November 2005 general election.

Professor Fuchs has been the recipient of a grant from the Wallace Foundation Learning in Communities Initiative in New York (with the Fund for the City of New York and Citizens Committee for Children) to plan a new Out of School Times System for the City of New York; Guggenheim Foundation grant (with Jameson Doig Princeton University) for summer public service internships; Principal Investigator for a Ford Foundation grant on Political Participation; and grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Professor Fuchs is a member of the New York City Commission on Economic Opportunity, New York City Work Force Investment Board, the Board of the Fund for the City of New York, the Advisory Board for NYC's Out of School Time Initiative; and the Hebrew University Rothenberg School Board. She was Faculty Editor of Metropolitics; former chair of the Center for Urban Research and Policy Urban Issues Workshop; a former member of the Urban Affairs Review Editorial Board, New York Foundation Board, Citizens Union Board, PENCIL (Public Education Needs Civic Involvement) Board, Center for An Urban Future Board and a Director of the Transderm Corporation.

Professor Fuchs has written political commentary, and she appears as a political analyst on radio and television.

 Professor Ari Goldman

Ari L. Goldman, a nationally recognized expert in religion and journalism, is the author of three books, including the best-selling The Search for God at Harvard.  He serves as a tenured professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he is the director of the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life.  Professor Goldman came to Columbia in 1993 after spending 20 years at the The New York Times, most of as a religion writer.

In addition to The Search for God at Harvard (1991), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Professor Goldman is author of: Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today (2000) and Living a Year of Kaddish (2003). He is currently editing and completing a novel, The Prophet's Wife, that was written by the late Rabbi Milton Steinberg (the renown author of As A Driven Leaf). The new novel will be published by Behrman House in 2006. Professor Goldman's next book will be a biography of one of the father's of Jewish-Christian dialogue, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum.

Professor Goldman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was educated at Yeshiva University, Columbia and Harvard. He joined The New York Times as a copy boy in 1973 and soon became the news clerk for A.M. Rosenthal, the Times' legendary Executive Editor. Promoted to reporter in 1975, Goldman went on to cover a variety of beats, including state politics, education and transportation, before becoming a religion writer in 1983. He spent the 1985-86 academic year as a New York Times Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School, which was the basis for his first book.

Professor Goldman was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1997-98; a Scholar-in-Residence at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in 2002-03m and a Skirball Fellow at England's Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in 2004. He serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Jewish Book Council, the Covenant Foundation and Congregation Ramath Orah, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan's upper West Side.

Professor Goldman lives in New York City with his wife, Shira Dicker, and their three children, Adam, Emma and Judah.

To learn more, visit Professor Goldman's website www.arigoldman.com

Rabbi Yonah and Keren Blum have created something quite extraordinary at Columbia. In this huge impersonal city and on this sometimes daunting campus, they have put out the welcome mat and opened the doors to their home to all who thirst for a Jewish experience. They are the spirit of Chabad at Columbia.

~Professor Ari Goldman

 Professor Judith S. Jacobson, DrPH, MBA

Dr. Judith S. Jacobson is an Associate Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.  Her major research interests are cancer, asthma, and the role of behavior, including the use of complementary/alternative medicine, in the prevention and control of these conditions. She and colleagues have collaborated on studies of factors associated with cancer outcomes in national data and decision analyses of breast cancer prevention strategies, and on clinical trials of an herbal agent to control hot flashes in breast cancer patients and vitamin supplementation to prevent DNA damage in heavy smokers. With funding from the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Dr. Jacobson is studying the determinants and outcomes of the use of complementary/alternative medicine among breast cancer cases in the Long Island Breast Cancer Study. With a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Dr. Jacobson and co-investigators are studying factors associated with the development and persistence of asthma in a cohort of children attending Head Start programs in New York City neighborhoods with high asthma hospitalization rates.  The Commonwealth Fund and MetroPlus are also providing funding to Dr. Jacobson and colleagues to conduct a randomized trial of an electronic device that teaches children aged 8-16 years to control their asthma. Dr. Jacobson is the vice-president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

"Chabad is an organization that brings us together; in doing so it makes an enormous contribution to the quality of Jewish life at Columbia, and I want to be part of it."

~Judith S. Jacobson, DrPH, MBA

 Professor Moshe Tenner, DDS

Dr. MosheTenner, DDS, of Great Neck, N.Y., is a retired dentist. Tenner, a 1962 graduate of the School of Dental and Oral Surgery, has been Assistant Professor of General Dentistry at Columbia School of Dental Medicine since 2001.  An Alumni Executive Board Member for the SDOS for 25-years, he has served 20-years on the school's Admissions Committee, and chairs the Annual Alumni Reception at the Greater New York Dental Meeting. He's been an Alumni Day chairman for five years, worked as a coordinator for the SDOS Career Placement Service and is a member of the Alumni Trustee Nominating Committee for the University.  Dr. Tenner is the American representative for DNA testing for the Kohanim gene.