Board of Directors
Professor Abraham Bell
Prof. Bell is a professor of law at the law schools of Bar Ilan University and University of San Diego. His research interests include international law (particularly the laws of war), property law (including intellectual property), and economic analysis of law. He studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University. Prof. Bell co-authored with Prof. Steinberg a study on NGO reporting during the Lebanon War, funded by the Israel Science Foundation. He currently serves on the board of the San Diego chapter of StandWithUs and the Israeli chapter of CAMERA (Presspectiva).
Mr. Joel Golovensky, Chair
Mr. Golovensky was born in New York City and was raised in New Rochelle, NY. He received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania (magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), a JD from the Harvard Law School, and an LLM from the New York University School of Law. Mr. Golovensky practiced law in New York for 20 years and was a managing partner of a Manhattan law firm before moving to Israel with his wife (Vera) and two daughters (Yael and Michal) in 1987. In New York, he was active in Jewish life, serving as Vice President and President-Elect of the Board of Jewish Education for the New York Metropolitan Area. In Israel, Mr. Golovensky practiced law and was active as a lay leader in the Jewish Agency for Israel, serving on the Executive of the Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education and on the Board of Governors Education Committee. At the end of 2004, he founded the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS). He has also written a bi-weekly column for Haaretz, articles for Maariv, the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Report, and was a pioneer mediator, serving on the panel of the Supreme Court. From September 1999-September 2002, Mr. Golovensky served as Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Russian Department in Moscow. Mr. Golovensky continues to practice international law.
Prof. Maureen Appel Molot is a Professor Emeritus and former director of The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA), at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. Maureen retired from Carleton at the end of June 2007. She has a BA and MA from McGill University and a PhD. from the University of California at Berkeley. Maureen’s research focused on a number of areas, including the auto industry in North America, Canada-US economic relations, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Canadian foreign economic policy. In addition, Maureen has been fortunate to have held a number of positions in the voluntary sector, among them President of the Ottawa Vaad Ha’Ir, Chair and a 13-year board member of the Community Foundation of Ottawa, and a member of the board of Community Foundations of Canada.
Charles (Chuck) Freedman is currently Scholar in Residence and Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He worked at the Bank of Canada from 1974 to 2003, serving as Deputy Governor from 1988 to 2003. Prior to joining the Bank of Canada in 1974, Freedman was a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. Since his retirement, Freedman has served as a consultant for a number of central banks, focusing on both monetary policy questions and issues surrounding the organization and structure of central banks. He has also produced studies on real interest rates for Canadian financial institutions. Freedman is a director of boards in Canada and Israel. Freedman studied at the University of Toronto, Oxford University, and M.I.T., from which he received a PhD in Economics. He has published widely in economic journals and volumes of conference proceedings.
Amuta Members
Adv. Trevor Asserson is the Founder and Senior Partner at Asserson Law Offices, a law firm in Tel Aviv that focuses purely on English law and is Israel’s largest foreign law firm. Mr. Asserson heads the Dispute Resolution and International Arbitration departments where he specializes in complex international litigation. His clients include sovereign states, multinational companies, banks, and high net worth individuals. Mr. Asserson also holds higher advocacy rights in the UK and is a qualified mediator. Mr. Asserson, a graduate of Oxford University, qualified as a UK solicitor in 1984 and was called to the Israeli Bar in 1992. Prior to establishing Asserson Law Offices, he was the Head of International Litigation at Bird & Bird, one of the leading law firms in the UK. He has been recognized for many years in the leading UK legal directories for his litigation skills where he has been described as a “brilliant litigator” who “has all the qualities needed and is commercially savvy”. He has also been shortlisted as “Litigator of the Year”.
Ms. Judy Lash Balint made aliya from Seattle, WA in 1998. She earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington where she was active in a variety of campus Jewish groups. She served as a Vice President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews for more than 9 years and founded Seattle Action for Soviet Jewry in 1975. Prior to moving to Israel she was director of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns-Amcha, headed by Rabbi Avi Weiss. Since 2008, she has been a staff member of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs where she serves as Book Review Editor of the Jewish Political Studies Review and coordinates the intern program. She is the author of two volumes of Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times, as well as dozens of articles published in newspapers and magazines worldwide. In an August 2001 article in The Jerusalem Report, “Not Help, But Interference,” she exposed the extent of financial involvement of European NGOs in the Israel-Arab conflict. She currently writes on a freelance basis for JNS.org.
Mr. Edward Cohen
Mr. Cohen is qualified as a chartered accountant in the UK. Mr. Cohen was previously a member of the London Stock Exchange and a partner at a stockbroking firm in London. He was also a member of Lloyds London. Upon moving to Israel in 1983, Mr. Cohen was involved in venture capital, and is the previous chairman of the Israel Free Loan Association (www.freeloan.org.il).
Ms. Penina Goldstein was educated at Columbia University in New York City, where she studied political science, law and international affairs. After working as a commercial lawyer in New York, she moved to Israel in 1994. There she worked as an attorney at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Revenue Administration at the Ministry of Finance, and as an editor at the Institute of the World Jewish Congress. She currently lives in Jerusalem and works as a freelance translator, working on legal and other materials for various government entities as well as a variety of private firms.
Ms. Frieda Horwitz, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin made aliya from Boston in 1983. She holds degrees from Barnard College and MIT in political science. Having done graduate work in International Relations and Middle East Studies at Columbia University and Hebrew University she is a graduate of the Hornstein MA Program at Brandeis. She was the national associate director of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and editor of their newsletter before making aliya. Ms. Horwitz then worked at the Pincus Fund and the Melton Center at Hebrew University before becoming the executive director of the Program for Innovative Teaching Fund. She was the assistant director of Moetzet Yachad for many years before creating and directing the experimental social policy Coalition Project in Kiryat Menachem Jerusalem in cooperation with the JDC. She has edited several books as well as authored articles in education and social policy. She continues to work as an editor and writer, and currently serves on the boards of several non-profit agencies.
Baruch Lionarons came to Jerusalem many years ago after being educated in his native Suriname and trained as business economist in the Netherlands and the USA. After a long career as a finance manager for a logistics company he taught economics and finance at a local college and presently doing innovation management in EU financed applied research consortia. He is passionate about conveying to all, but especially the younger generations a deep love for Israel with a critical, outward looking sense of citizenship. Baruch has a critical eye for slanted and tendentious Israel news coverage and often took issue with outlets such as The Guardian and the Economist (both U.K.) and VPRO (a Dutch public broadcaster). Being a keen cyclist, he gets to deep thinking mode on long, steep climbs.
Rabbi Dov Lipman was born and raised in Silver Spring, MD. He has rabbinic ordination from the Ner Israel Rabbinical College and a Masters in Education from Johns Hopkins University. Rabbi Lipman served as a teacher and administrator in the United States before moving to Israel with his wife and four children in July 2004. They settled in Bet Shemesh where he taught in post high school yeshivot and seminaries for boys and girls from North America. Tensions between populations in Bet Shemesh led to Rabbi Lipman getting involved in community activism which led to national standing as a personality who represents a moderate and embracing Judaism. He is also the author of three books which have inspired Jewish youth about Judaism and his fourth book, “TO UNIFY A NATION – My vision for the future of Israel” was published in 2014. He served as a member of Knesset for Yesh Atid between 2013 and 2015. Rabbi Lipman is currently the Director of the Department for the Zionist Operations and Director of Public Diplomacy at the World Zionist Organization.
Dr. Assaf Malach is the founder and head of the Jewish Statesmanship Center (JSC). As an extra-academic institution launched in 2007, JSC develops Zionist leadership among outstanding students who are motivated to contribute through public service. Dr. Malach’s fields of research include nationalism and the nation-state, political philosophy, and Jewish and Israeli political thought. He is a lecturer in all of these disciplines at the Shalem College and serves as a research fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum and at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Since 2015, Dr. Malach has chaired the Ministry of Education’s Committee for Citizenship Studies. His book on the development of Jewish nationalism was published by Yedioth Books in 2019.
Ms. Linda Olmert was born and raised in Toronto Canada, and moved to Israel in 1975. Ms. Olmert served as the Director of NPO “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Land”), and is currently a senior Real Estate Broker. Ms. Olmert previously spent 12 years at the Diaspora Museum Tel Aviv, developing “Game Education”; and was the Director of Media Relations and Resource Development at Palestinian Media Watch. She founded The Organization for Children of Holocaust Survivors in Israel; Executive Steering Committee member and Board of Directors member Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem Israel; Vice President and Board of Directors member Fellowship of Israel and Black America (FIBA).
Dr. Amira Schiff is a faculty member of the program on Conflict Resolution, Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University. She holds a PhD in Political Science specializing in international conflict resolution, particularly peace processes in ethno-national conflicts. Dr. Schiff has published articles in leading academic journals and three books.
Prof. Jeffrey R. Woolf is an Associate Professor in the Talmud Department at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, specializing in Jewish Intellectual History and the inter-action between Judaism, Islam and Christianity. He received his PhD from Harvard and spent two years at Yale as a Post-Doc in Religion. He studied for nine and a half years under Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and was ordained at Yeshiva University. He chairs the Maaseh Hoshev Institute for Leadership Development and sits on the Executive Committeesof the Museum of Italian Jewry in Jerusalem and of Ma’aleh: The Center for Religious Zionism. He has served on the Boards of the Rabbinical Council of America, Beit Hillel and was the founding Chairman of Yeshiva University’s Orthodox Forum in Israel. Fluent in five languages, he is frequently interviewed in the electronic and print media, in Israel and abroad on a broad swath of contemporary issues. He has authored or edited three books and over forty scholarly monographs, along with dozens of articles in Hebrew and English News and Thought Platforms.
