About Us

David Ackerman
Director, Mandel Center for Jewish Education

Dr. David Ackerman, director of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education, has over 25 years experience in Jewish camping. He received his Ph.D. in Special Education at UCLA and was instrumental in establishing numerous programs for Jewish children with disabilities. He has worked in all levels of formal and informal Jewish education from early childhood through graduate teacher-training. He lectures widely on Israel, prayer and spirituality, children with special needs, and the arts in education. Prior to coming to the MCJE, he was the director of educational services at the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Los Angeles.
Tel: 212-786-5110
Email: dackerman@jcca.org

Jennifer Tobenstein
Assistant Director, Mandel Center for Jewish Education

Rabbi Jennifer Tobenstein, assistant director of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education, has unique educational, congregational, and organizational experience in both national and international Jewish communities. Ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, she has taught at day schools, synagogues, and JCCs in the United States, Canada, France, Israel and Ukraine. She has served both as a congregational rabbi and a chaplain, and has worked with special needs populations at different JCC camps in the U.S. and Canada.
Tel: 212-786-5123
E-mail: Jennifer@jcca.org

Melanie Levav
Program Director, Mandel Center for Jewish Education

Melanie Levav, program director of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education, has more than 15 years of experience in Jewish communal service. She has been a synagogue youth group advisor, camp counselor and educator, fundraiser, and has served as the director of Jewish education at a JCC, during which time she was a fellow in Brandeis University’s Institute for Informal Jewish Education as well as a participant in the MCJE Jewish Educators’ Initiative with the Mandel School in Jerusalem. Most recently, she spent several years with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, recruiting and placing volunteers in year-long positions serving as Jewish educators in JCCs overseas.
Tel: 212-710-6434
E-mail: Melanie@jcca.org

Jordan Zarin
Administrative Assistant, Mandel Center for Jewish Education

Tel: 212-786-5145
E-mail: jzarin@jcca.org

Alvin Mars
Senior Advisor to the President for Educational Development

Rabbi Alvin Mars, Ph.D., is the senior advisor to the president of JCC Association for educational development. Until November, he had served as the founding director of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education. With more than forty years of experience as a Jewish educator working within many different formal and informal settings, he has been both a youth director and educational director in a synagogue setting, headmaster of an elementary day school and of a boarding high school, dean of a graduate school of education, vice-president for academic affairs of a university, and director of two camps - Camp Ramah in California and the Brandeis Bardin Institute.
Tel: 603-292-6205
E-mail: amars@jcca.org