Writer Profiles

Harris Eppsteiner is a senior from Atlanta majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. When he’s not tackling the big questions of Jewish life and culture or defending beloved childhood holidays from pesky modern values, he studies international development and enjoys singing, cooking, and philological hermeneutics.
Michael Fraade is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College majoring in history. Growing up in Weston, CT, he attended Jewish day school and public high school, and also spent spring 2007 in Israel with Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim. When not working with Shibboleth, his interests include singing, debate, camping, and cooking.
Richard Kahn is a junior in Silliman College. He grew up in the Chicagoland area and studied at various Schechter schools (along with another editor of Shibboleth) before heading to Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, where he spent a year on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere studying Jewish (broadly construed) texts. It was wonderful. He enjoys applesauce, Phish, classical piano, and the Aruch Hashulchan.
Shai Kamin is a senior in Pierson College. He is a biomedical engineering major, but loves discussing and writing about issues in the modern Jewish world. In that respect, Shibboleth is one of the most important things he does at Yale.
Shira Petrack is a senior in Pierson, majoring in Philosophy and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She grew up in Paris, Jerusalem and Boston and has found the variations with the consistency across the Jewish communities in these various locations fascinating, and thus is very interested in how a religious community is shaped by the larger (non-religious) environment which shapes it.
Yishai Schwartz, class of 2013, is a native of Riverdale in the Bronx, New York. He graduated SAR High School and studied for a year at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush) in Alon Shevut, Israel. He hasn’t picked a major yet, but will pick something in the Humanities and stay as far away from math and science as is humanly possible within the confines of Yale’s distributional requirements. Yishai also thinks Tony Kronman is right, and that the Directed Studies curriculum is the ideal college curriculum – though they should make more time for the Hebrew Bible.
Sahar Segal

Faculty Emeriti

Jacob Abolafia
20 going on 9, Annie Atura aspires to become the first female president, a whimsical cake decorator, and a mind-boggling mathematician. She does her best to express those aspirations via the English and art in which she will receive her degree.
Rebecca Linfield Morse College 2011, majored in Mathematics and Philosophy. She loves reading, running, swimming, sewing, cooking, learning and discussing everything Jewish, especially Bible. Hailing from Irvine, CA, Rebecca aspires to be a bioethicist and a practicing physician, bridging the worlds of medicine and halakha.
Raphael Magarik
Yasha Magarik, a Brooklynite, is interested in the Jewish civilization, English literature, and issues of environmental and socioeconomic justice. He grows basil and will be married in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (pictured below).
Josh Price was the Class of 2011′s Judaic Studies major. His current academic interests revolve around the literary, cultural, and political dimensions of the Yiddishist movement of the early 20th century. He also enjoys billiards, crossword puzzles, and postwar jazz.
Yedidya Schwartz was born in Jerusalem and bred in Riverdale, NY. He attended a quirky succession of day schools, public schools, and Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, where he learned everything worthwhile he knows about life and Judaism. His interests range from halakha to Islamic thought to the philosophy of physics, and as such he has had difficulty coming up with a major. As a career, Yedidya hopes to go into intellectual journalism, academia, or the rabbinate, depending on which one will have him.