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Home > About Us > Board Of Directors

Board Of Directors

Board Of Directors

OFFICERS

Tobias Kahan, President

Tobias Kahan is a Bay Area native and has been a member of Beth Jacob since returning from Israel with his family in 2021. He spent seven years living in Tel Aviv where he met his wife and had their first child. During that time he worked at a cybersecurity startup and served in the Israeli Air Force. He is so grateful to have found Beth Jacob, a warm and welcoming community where he can live a proud Jewish life and raise his children steeped in Jewish wisdom and spirituality.

Deborah Sosebee, Vice President

Deborah Sosebee, former Board President, is a native Northern Californian and has been a member of Beth Jacob since 2003. Before becoming a full-time mom, Deborah worked in Operations Research at the New York Stock Exchange. Since becoming a full-time mom, Deborah has served on the boards and committees of various institutions including Redwood Day School, Jewish Family & Community Services, Jewish Community High School of the Bay, and The Jewish Community Foundation. In her free time, Deborah enjoys cooking and baking, crossword and Ken-Ken puzzles, finding typos, and organizing things. Deborah and her husband Michael have three children, Hannah, Isaac and Daniel, and four grandchildren: Betzalel, Arava, Chaviv and Reishit.

Mary Friedman, Vice President

Mary has been part of the incredible Beth Jacob Community since moving back to the Bay Area in 2010.  She was born in Moscow, Russia and grew up in the South Bay. Mary works in healthcare strategy, got her B.A. in Economics and Political Science from UC Berkeley and her Masters in Healthcare Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health. Mary lives in Oakland with her husband and three boys on a mini urban farm with bees, fruit trees, veggie beds, a greenhouse, and chickens coming soon!

Leah,  Treasurer

We moved across the Bay Area specifically to join Beth Jacob because it's a synagogue and community rooted in warmth and Jewish tradition. As a parent, I'm especially grateful for the way Beth Jacob embraces families and provides our children with joyous, fun programming that inspires curiosity and a love of Jewish values and Israel that will stay with them for life. Being a leader in this community is a privilege -- every opportunity to help, strengthen, and uplift our Shul and Gan deepens my connection and reminds me how truly special this place is.

Jason Roberts,  Secretary

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jennifer Blumenfeld

 

Jen moved to Oakland in 2011, shortly after marrying her husband Izzy, to join the Beth Jacob community. An East Bay native, Jen, Izzy, and their three daughters appreciate living close to their extended family. Jen dedicates her free time to building and nurturing the Jewish community. She has been a foundational member of Mission Minyan, served on the membership and chesed committees at Beth Jacob Congregation, and helped create and launch the Welcoming Committee (The WelCom) at Oakland Hebrew Day School. Beyond her family and community involvement, Jen enjoys drinking coffee, doing jigsaw puzzles, and listening to audiobooks.

Alexandra Hart

Alex, born Salford, UK is a long-time Beth Jacob member. She has served on the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Saks’ זצ'ל Champions of Change, designed to shake up the UK’s United Synagogue; Board Member of Hampstead Synagogue and Board Member of Oakland Hebrew Day School. Many late nights were spent working in London’s square mile before she pivoted to serve private foundations, in London and Europe, Israel, and here in the Bay Area. Each of her three children were born on different continents and these days, late nights are filled with magical bedtime stories, unless there’s a Board Meeting.

Brian Kaye

Brian has been a member of Beth Jacob Congregation since 1992. He is a retired physician with a specialty in rheumatology, with a former practice in Berkeley and Orinda. He served as a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and an Adjunct Professor at Touro University in Vallejo. Brian is also very active in the Jewish community. He has been on the Board of Beth Jacob since 1995 and is a past-president. He is a past-president and long-term board member of Oakland Hebrew Day School (OHDS) and co-founder and past-president of the Jewish Community High School of the Bay (JCHS). Brian has chaired nine head of school or senior rabbinic searches for Beth Jacob, OHDS, and JCHS. He has been a Wexner Heritage Foundation Fellow and also served on the Executive Board of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay. Although born in Detroit, Brian considers himself a Bay Area native as he grew up in Palo Alto.

Brian has a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine. He and his wonderful wife Fran have two children, Naomi and Joshua, and son-in-law, Honza, and two grandchildren, Ezra and Abram. Brian’s hobbies include playing with his grandchildren, travel, studying Jewish texts, reading, genealogy, classical music, going to art museums, and philately.

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Zoe Levine Lenhoff 

Zoe is an Oakland native whose family has been members of the Beth Jacob community since the 1980s. Born into a multicultural home, she ensures her three children’s lives are imbued with traditional Torah values, bilingual, spicy-food tolerant and well-traveled. 

Professionally her background is in real estate finance having worked at Wells Fargo’s Corporate & Investment Banking division for nearly a decade. Today she is gratefully a full time mom and is dedicated to ensuring the spiritual growth and safety of Jews in the Bay.

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Phillip Ross

Phil, former Board President, is an East Bay native, raised in Piedmont. His family joined Beth Jacob in 1991, with his encouragement while he was in college, and has served as Board President. Throughout college and medical school he held leadership roles with Jewish organizations on campus and beyond. He is a former board member of the Montreal Community Education Center and Oakland Hebrew Day School. He spent a year of intensive text-based study at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and the Schlesinger Institute for Medical-Halachic Research at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He returned to Bay Area to complete his fellowship in Urologic Oncology at UCSF. Phil is a urological surgeon practicing in Oakland and Orinda and has been actively involved with Beth Jacob since his return to the Bay Area in 2005. He lives in Oakland with his wife, Daphna and their three children.

Raphael Shorser

Born in Toronto, Raphi moved to the Bay area with his family in 2018 after 10 years in NYC. Raphi has spent over a decade working in the FinTech world, most recently as an engineering leader at Goldman Sachs. In his free time, Raphi can be found spending time with his wife Nili and two sons (Ezra & Natan), riding his bike, or exploring ways to enhance our Eruv.

Raphael Edelman

Raphael was brought up in the Modern Orthodox community in Brookline, MA. He and his wife, Leslie, relocated from NYC to Oakland for a two year stint….in late 1992!! Raphael joined the board in 1993 and has held many different positions over the 3+ decades focusing most recently on our fundraising efforts to ensure the financial sustainability of our beloved shul.  Raphael is also a founding member and current President of the Jewish Community High School of the Bay (JCHS) from which all 5 of his children attended and graduated.

Lisa Kurtz Timen

Lisa joined the Beth Jacob community in 2017 shortly before she and her family moved to the East Bay from San Francisco.  She grew up in Los Angeles and then went to UC Berkeley for her BA, UC San Diego for her PhD in Neuroscience and Stanford for her MD. When she left Berkeley in 2003, she would never have imagined that she would be living back up here 20 years later, but has found a uniquely welcoming and irreplaceable home in both the Beth Jacob and OHDS communities. She lives in Piedmont with her husband and four children and can usually be found playing with them, doing experiments in her kitchen, or fixing something. 

Yossi (Joseph) Aharon

Yossi and his now-wife Emily joined the Beth Jacob community in 2022 after he completed his master's degree at UC Berkeley. Yossi grew up in New York, attending Modern Orthodox day schools and Yeshiva University for college. Yossi's career spans multiple areas of advanced technologies, including AI, semiconductor hardware, cryptocurrency, and fintech.

Yossi's love for travel and diverse Jewish ancestry (hailing from Afghanistan, Baghdad, Poland, and Israel) have instilled a deep appreciation for learning new things and allowing people with nontraditional backgrounds to feel welcome. He is passionate about building a strong center of community.

Mon, February 9 2026 22 Shevat 5786