Leadership Biographies
Mark L. Kligman, Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music and and Musicology at UCLA; Director of the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music, specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities and various areas of popular Jewish music. He has published on the liturgical music of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in journals as well as his book, Maqām and Liturgy: Ritual, Music and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Wayne State University, 2009), which shows the interconnection between the music of Syrian Jews and their cultural way of life. His other publications focus on the intersection of contemporary Jewish life and various liturgical and paraliturgical musical contexts. He is the Academic Chair of the Jewish Music Forum and co-editor of the journal Musica Judaica. He is also on the board of the Association for Jewish Studies. Kligman received his Ph.D. New York University (Musicology with an emphasis in Ethnomusicology); M.A. New York University, (Urban Ethnomusicology).
James Loeffler is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia. Between 2013 and 2015 he was a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow in International Law and Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law School. At UVA he teaches courses in Jewish and European history, and the history of human rights. He is currently completing two books: Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2018), and an edited volume, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyering and International Law in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). His other research interests include American Jewish politics, the past and present of Zionism, contemporary Jewish culture, and the history of Jewish music. His first book was The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010; paperback edition, 2013). For ten years he served as scholar-in-residence at Pro Musica Hebraica in Washington, DC, where he curated historically-informed concerts at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ph.D. Columbia University, 2006; M.A. Columbia University, 2000; B.A. Harvard University, 1996
Judah M. Cohen, Associate Professor of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is also Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture at the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. HIs research interests include music in Jewish life, American music, musical theater, popular culture, Caribbean Jewish history, diaspora, and medical ethnomusicology. His training as a musicologist and an anthropologist, and his professional activity within Jewish studies, has allowed him to explore many aspects of Jewish culture and history. As a child, he spent two years in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., and he returned to this island in his first book (Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.), which is both a historical narrative and a meditation on writing the history of a small community. In his doctoral work, he explored the meaning of becoming a Reform Jewish cantor at the turn of the twenty-first century, based on three years of ethnographic study with cantorial students. Subsequent projects have led him to investigate the history of Jewish music scholarship in the United States, musical theater works that address Holocaust memory, contemporary forms of Jewish musical expression and musical representations of such cultural figures as Anne Frank and Shylock. Throughout his research, he has focused on the idea of Jewish cultural expression as a dynamic and ever-changing process, created and recreated over time by artists, religious leaders, philosophers and activists. He has aimed to understand this idea largely through the prism of sound and its relationship to ideas of Jewish identity.He received the IU Trustees Teaching Award in both 2008 and 2011, and the Greater Hudson Heritage Network Award for Excellence in 2011 for his book Sounding Jewish Tradition: The Music of Central Synagogue. Ph.D. Harvard University, 2000, M.A., Harvard University, 1998; B.A., Yale College, 1995.
Gordon Dale, the Inaugural Dr. Jack Gottlieb, z”l, Scholar in Jewish Music Studies, currently serves as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC/New York. Effective July 1, 2022, he will become the Assistant Professor of Jewish Musicology in the DFSSM. Dr. Dale has most recently conducted extensive research in the Hasidic communities of New York and Israel, and has lectured across the United States on topics related to Israeli popular music, and Jewish music and mysticism. Dr. Dale is currently the Executive Director of The Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, and is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music. He holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an M.A. from Tufts University, and a B.S. from Northeastern University.
Samantha Cooper is a Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies (2022-2023 academic year). She graduated in May 2022 with a PhD in Historical Musicology from New York University, with a dissertation titled "Cultivating High Society: American Jews engaging European Opera in New York, 1880-1940." Samantha's first article about the vocal recordings of Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand was published in February 2022 in the Journal of the Society for American Music, and her next paper about anarchist Emma Goldman’s opera appreciation in forthcoming in American Jewish History. For the past five years, Samantha has served as the Associate Executive Director of the Jewish Music Forum, A Project of the American Society for Jewish Music.
Michael Leavitt is the President of the American Society for Jewish Music. He is Managing Director of MPL Productions, Inc., which produces, advertises and markets the arts. He has served on the Boards of Chorus America, The Mendelssohn Project, and the Institute for Study and Advancement of Boychoir. For nearly 40 years, Michael Leavitt, through MPL Productions, Empire Music Group, a record distributorship, and Allied Artists Bureau, a management firm for classical artists, he has produced, managed and promoted the performing arts, working with such organizations as the Clarion Music Society, Amor Artis, the Gregg Smith Singers, Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, Horizon Concerts, the Beethoven Society, the MTA (Music Under New York), and with principal dancers from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, as well as an array of distinguished individual performers. He has produced more than 50 recordings, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards.
James Loeffler is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia. Between 2013 and 2015 he was a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow in International Law and Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law School. At UVA he teaches courses in Jewish and European history, and the history of human rights. He is currently completing two books: Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2018), and an edited volume, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyering and International Law in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). His other research interests include American Jewish politics, the past and present of Zionism, contemporary Jewish culture, and the history of Jewish music. His first book was The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010; paperback edition, 2013). For ten years he served as scholar-in-residence at Pro Musica Hebraica in Washington, DC, where he curated historically-informed concerts at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ph.D. Columbia University, 2006; M.A. Columbia University, 2000; B.A. Harvard University, 1996
Judah M. Cohen, Associate Professor of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is also Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture at the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. HIs research interests include music in Jewish life, American music, musical theater, popular culture, Caribbean Jewish history, diaspora, and medical ethnomusicology. His training as a musicologist and an anthropologist, and his professional activity within Jewish studies, has allowed him to explore many aspects of Jewish culture and history. As a child, he spent two years in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., and he returned to this island in his first book (Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.), which is both a historical narrative and a meditation on writing the history of a small community. In his doctoral work, he explored the meaning of becoming a Reform Jewish cantor at the turn of the twenty-first century, based on three years of ethnographic study with cantorial students. Subsequent projects have led him to investigate the history of Jewish music scholarship in the United States, musical theater works that address Holocaust memory, contemporary forms of Jewish musical expression and musical representations of such cultural figures as Anne Frank and Shylock. Throughout his research, he has focused on the idea of Jewish cultural expression as a dynamic and ever-changing process, created and recreated over time by artists, religious leaders, philosophers and activists. He has aimed to understand this idea largely through the prism of sound and its relationship to ideas of Jewish identity.He received the IU Trustees Teaching Award in both 2008 and 2011, and the Greater Hudson Heritage Network Award for Excellence in 2011 for his book Sounding Jewish Tradition: The Music of Central Synagogue. Ph.D. Harvard University, 2000, M.A., Harvard University, 1998; B.A., Yale College, 1995.
Gordon Dale, the Inaugural Dr. Jack Gottlieb, z”l, Scholar in Jewish Music Studies, currently serves as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC/New York. Effective July 1, 2022, he will become the Assistant Professor of Jewish Musicology in the DFSSM. Dr. Dale has most recently conducted extensive research in the Hasidic communities of New York and Israel, and has lectured across the United States on topics related to Israeli popular music, and Jewish music and mysticism. Dr. Dale is currently the Executive Director of The Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, and is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music. He holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an M.A. from Tufts University, and a B.S. from Northeastern University.
Samantha Cooper is a Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies (2022-2023 academic year). She graduated in May 2022 with a PhD in Historical Musicology from New York University, with a dissertation titled "Cultivating High Society: American Jews engaging European Opera in New York, 1880-1940." Samantha's first article about the vocal recordings of Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand was published in February 2022 in the Journal of the Society for American Music, and her next paper about anarchist Emma Goldman’s opera appreciation in forthcoming in American Jewish History. For the past five years, Samantha has served as the Associate Executive Director of the Jewish Music Forum, A Project of the American Society for Jewish Music.
Michael Leavitt is the President of the American Society for Jewish Music. He is Managing Director of MPL Productions, Inc., which produces, advertises and markets the arts. He has served on the Boards of Chorus America, The Mendelssohn Project, and the Institute for Study and Advancement of Boychoir. For nearly 40 years, Michael Leavitt, through MPL Productions, Empire Music Group, a record distributorship, and Allied Artists Bureau, a management firm for classical artists, he has produced, managed and promoted the performing arts, working with such organizations as the Clarion Music Society, Amor Artis, the Gregg Smith Singers, Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, Horizon Concerts, the Beethoven Society, the MTA (Music Under New York), and with principal dancers from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, as well as an array of distinguished individual performers. He has produced more than 50 recordings, five of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards.