GTP FOUNDING SPONSOR COMMITTEE & STAFF
Rabbi Stephen Booth (Reconstructionist)
Rabbi Paula Goldberg (Reform)
Rabbi Robert Gluck (Reconstructionist)
Rabbi Abraham Raich, zt"l (Orthodox)
Rabbi Richard Simon (Renewal)
Rabbi Jonathan Slater (Conservative)
Rabbi Abner Weiss (Orthodox)
Rabbi Moshe ben Asher and Magidah Khulda Bat Sarah serve as the co-directors of GTP. They formerly served Temple Ner Shalom (Conservative) of San Luis Obispo, California, Congregation Beth Israel (reform) of Chico, California, and Kehillat Kharakim (independent) of Los Angeles.
Moshe received an MSW in community organizing from UCLA and a PhD in community organizing and social development from UC Berkeley. He began his community organizing in the late 1960s, when he co-organized the Southern California Council of Free Clinics during his tenure as the Los Angeles County CAO's Drug Abuse Coordinator. Over the next decade and a half he was a neighborhood organizer for a number of projects, including ACORN Jersey City and Citizens Action League of California. He was also Statewide Training Director and Director of Neighborhood Organizing for Citizens Action League. Following private smikha (ordination) from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, zt"l, and a stint as a volunteer prison chaplain in upstate New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, he became a staff organizer for the Orange County Congregation Community Organizations, part of the nationwide PICO (now Faith in Action) network of faith-based organizing projects. He subsequently became Assistant Director of Organize Training Center in San Francisco.
Moshe has taught courses on community planning, organizing and development, and related subjects at San Bernardino Valley College, California State College at San Bernardino, California State University at Hayward, the School of Social Work and Community Planning of the University of Maryland, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the School of Social Work at the State University of New York in Albany, and California State University at Long Beach, Los Angeles, Dominguez Hills, and Northridge. Moshe was founding Co-Editor of The Organizer, a journal for organizers, published by the ACORN Institute for Social Justice, and he has authored and co-authored numerous published articles on faith-based and community organizing and development.
Khulda is certified as a Magidah and Rabbinic Pastor by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, zt"l. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the California State University at Fresno. After two decades as a full-time mother and homemaker, she was trained in community organizing by Organize Training Center of San Francisco and in faith-based organizing by the Pacific Institute for Community Organization in Oakland, California. She was a staff organizer and Associate Staff Director for the PICO-affiliated North County Community Project in Santa Maria, California, and Co-Director of the Marin County Organizing Project.