Simon Klarfeld: Guest Speaker

“Youth Activism: Then and Now”

Simon Klarfeld is the inaugural executive director of the newly independent Young Judaea.  Klarfeld, 44, is a native of London, England, where as a teen, he ran his first overnight summer camp for Jewish teens from across Europe, and chaired the Zionist Youth Council of Great Britain.  As a young adult, he lived in Russia, directing activities on behalf of the Soviet Jewry movement there.  His work included the training of Jewish youth leaders throughout the then-Soviet Union.

Klarfeld, who most recently transformed the Hillel at Columbia University and Barnard College during his seven-year tenure as its executive director, has taught courses on Jewish Perspectives on Leadership, Contemporary Israel, Zionist History and Ideas, and Jewish Philosophy of Freedom, at conferences, universities, and institutes throughout the world.  He also has trained informal Jewish educators through the Institute for Informal Jewish Education, the iCenter, Foundation for Jewish Camp, North American Alliance for Jewish Youth, Brandeis University’s Hornstein Program in Jewish Communal Service, and Machon L’Madrichei Chutz La’Aretz.

Prior to Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Klarfeld professionally served as director of the Soviet Jewry movement in both England and Northern California, vice president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, interim vice president of Birthright Israel North America, and founding director of Genesis at Brandeis – a summer program for high school students.

He lives in Teaneck, N.J., with his wife, Dara Klarfeld (nee Zabb), an alumna of Young Judaea’s Camp Sprout Lake and national high school leadership camp, Tel Yehudah, and their three young children.  Klarfeld, who is fluent in Russian and also speaks Hebrew and French, holds a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from the University of Keele in England, as well as a master’s in Jewish communal service from Brandeis.