Limmud Atlanta + Southeast Selects 2016 YAD Cohort

Six local emerging Jewish leaders – Gabrielle Adler, Taylor Amsler, Nathan Brodsky, Sarah Lashinky, AJT Associate Editor David Cohen, and Madeline Oppenheim have been selected to Limmud Atlanta + Southeast’s young adult development cohort for 2016.

Limmud YAD is a highly selective leadership training program for 22-30 year olds that gets them involved in Atlanta’s Jewish community and supports their involvement with the annual LimmudFest in the Fall. During the six month long program, YADs are exposed to Jewish professionals from local, national and international communities. 

“We are looking to support a committed and prepared generation of emerging young leaders who will strengthen the Atlanta Jewish community,” said Eliana Leader, YAD program director. “Not just through participation with Limmud, but by participating in leadership positions throughout the city.”

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The YAD program is supported by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. Participants are selected based on recommendations by other lay leaders and Jewish community professionals in Atlanta.

Below is a list of the 2016 YAD Cohort participants with bio.

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Gabrielle Adler
Gabrielle Adler is 24 years old, and will be getting married in November 2016. She moved to Atlanta in September 2015 after completing her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She is currently employed at Ahavath Achim Synagogue, where she is the Administrative Assistant to their Family Learning and Living Initiative.

Taylor Amsler
Born and raised in Atlanta, Taylor Amsler graduated with an honors degree in biology from the University of Georgia. Since then, Taylor has found work as a yogurt salesman, a screenwriter, a virtual reality marketer, a mediocre chess hustler, a musician, a Sunday School teacher, a movie script reviewer, and, at the time of this writing, a project manager in the IP division of a law firm. He will be sure to let you know when he figures out what he wants to be when he grows up.
Taylor has been lucky enough to work with Jewish organizations nationwide and has served as a Sunday School teacher at The Temple in Atlanta, GA and Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California. He has also been a camp counselor at URJ Camp Eisner in Massachusetts and a participant in Mitzvah Corps in San Francisco.

Nathan Brodsky
Nathan Brodsky works at Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and runs PJ Library- an organization that distributes Jewish books for kids. He is involved with both Moishe Houses in Atlanta and is a board member for Moishe House Inman Park. After graduating from Tulane University, he worked at American Hebrew Academy, a Jewish boarding school in Greensboro, North Carolina. Nathan enjoys eating artichokes, limes, and chicken salad sandwiches.

David Cohen
David was born and raised in Marietta, GA and grew up playing a variety of sports. That love of sports and competition led him to attend the University of Tennessee from 2008-2012 where he played collegiate Rugby and majored in Journalism. In 2013, David represented the USA in Rugby at the 19th Maccabiah Games in Israel. Currently he is the Associate Editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a 91-year-old weekly publication. You can find David around town reporting for the AJT and playing guitar in the Cohen Brothers Band, a bluegrass duo with his brother Elie. He is also an avid softball player and competes in the JCC men’s modified fast pitch softball league and Atlanta Synagogue softball league where he is the captain of Etz Chaim’s squad.

Sarah Lashinsky
Sarah Lashinsky is among the founding residents of Moishe House Inman Park, where she currently lives, and enjoys an active role in the global Moishe House community. Recently she planned and led a retreat for Jewish young adults in the South called “Shalom Y’All”, a collaboration of several Moishe Houses in the southeast and Young Adult Jews of Asheville.
When she’s not strategizing, cooking or planning up the next big partnership for Moishe House, she can be found disrupting the public education system as a design educator with STE(A)M Truck, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that brings high end tools and technologies to the city’s most underserved elementary- and middle-school students in the form of a mobile makerspace.

Madeline Oppenheim
Madeline Oppenheim is currently completing her Bachelor’s degree at Georgia State University, majoring in Religious Studies with a minor in psychology. Next year, she plans to apply to a clinical psychology doctoral program. She has completed two years at List College in New York. Prior to that, she attended school at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem for four months. She is a Jewish preschool teacher, Jewish Yoga teacher, and a Hebrew Tutor. Madeline is very active with Hillel and Chabad on campus. She is also president of Georgia State University’s Religious Studies Student Forum, and is currently planning an inter-faith open mic night event.