True Colors

RUTH BEHAR (Writer) is the Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellows “Genius” Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A traveler, storyteller, poet, educator, and public speaker, her books include The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba and Traveling Heavy: A Memoir In Between Journeys. She is the editor of the pioneering anthology, Bridges to Cuba and co-editor of The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World. Her documentary, Adio Kerida/Goodbye Dear Love: A Cuban Sephardic Journey, distributed by Women Make Movies, has been shown in festivals around the world. Her debut novel for young readers, Lucky Broken Girl, the coming-of-age story of a Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl, won the Pura Belpré Author Award from the American Library Association. Her bilingual poetry collection, Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé, is a new release with Swan Isle Press. For more information: http://www.ruthbehar.com/.

RABBI ANGELA WARNICK BUCHDAHL (Writer) joined Central Synagogue as senior cantor in 2006 and in 2014 was chosen by its congregation to lead them as senior rabbi. Born in Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother, Rabbi Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as cantor or rabbi in North America. She has been nationally rec- ognized for her innovations in leading services, which draw large crowds both in the congre- gation’s main sanctuary and via live stream and cable broadcast to viewers in more than 100 countries. She has served as faculty for the Wexner Heritage Foundation and for the Union for Reform Judaism Kallot programs and has been featured in dozens of news outlets, including the Today Show, NPR, and PBS. Listed in 2012 by Newsweek as one of America’s 50 Most Influen- tial Rabbis, she serves on the boards of Auburn Theological Seminary, Avodah Jewish Service Corps, AJC, and UJA-Federation of NY.

DAVID CHIU (Writer) is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He and writing partner Patrick Wall wrote an episode for the Amazon Prime series LORE and recently sold a VR project to Dreamscape Immersive for development with Sam Raimi and Walter Parkes. Together, David and Patrick are represented by Authentic Talent & Literary Management. David is a member of Temple Isaiah, whose board of trustees he was nominated to this year. Through his work with the Temple Isaiah Green Team, he has personally advocated for environmental policy at City Hall and in Sacramento. A weekly attendee at his shul’s Torah study minyan as well as Shabbat services, he was honored to receive Temple Isaiah’s 2019 Emerging Leaders Award. Also a member of the Los Angeles Jews of Color group, David is thrilled to help celebrate the Jewish community’s diversity.

MARCOS COHEN, a/k/a MOR D. HAI (Songwriter) is an actor-singer and songwriter who was born in Uruguay and is currently living in Los Angeles. In 2008, he produced his first CD album in Latin Jewish music, Diaspora Sur, and since then has been presenting his contagious music across South and North America. Cohen started his artistic career as a playwright and director of musical theater. He has written the music and book of more than ten plays for children and adults, including Al Jolson, The Show Must Go On, Trapped at Tea Time, A Magic Book, Robotic Park, CooCoo Beat Show, and The Creation. His “Hay Que Cantar” was awarded best original song at the 2000 World Championships of Performing Arts in Los Angeles. Since his Hollywood acting debut in the movie The Good Shepherd (Universal, 2006), directed by Robert De Niro, he has appeared in the TV shows Jane the Virgin, Dharma & Greg, Ally Mc Beal, Angeles, and Locked Up Abroad, to name a few.

COURTENAY EDELHART (Writer) is the biracial daughter of two social worker parents, one black and one an Ashkenazi Jew. She and her twin sister grew up in Chicago and Albuquerque. Courtenay majored in journalism at Northwestern University before embarking on a nearly three-decade-long career as a newspaper reporter. Now in her 50’s, she’s gone back to school and is working toward a credential to teach middle or high school English. She lives in Lancaster, California, with two adopted teenagers, a vicious little Chihuahua-terrier mix, and assorted dying houseplants.

BRIE ELEY (Actor) is a comedic actress/creator with dramatic tendencies. She trained at Marymount Manhattan College and the British American Drama Academy at Oxford University. Upon graduation, she apprenticed at Actors Theatre of Louisville before performing regionally at the Kennedy Center and across stages in New York. Done with the snow and tiny rooms, Brie made her way to LA for sunshine and closet space. Since arriving, she’s appeared in commercials and film/tv and was just on the “Staycation” episode of NBC’s Brooklyn 99. She continues to act onstage at spaces like Skylight Theater and A Noise Within while flexing her comedy chops at Comedy Central Stage, Second City, and The Pack. As a creator, her rom-com Blind Date Rules is now streaming on Amazon Prime, and her latest short, Acceptance, now lives on BET. Website: brieeley.com Instagram: @brieeley

ANDREW FROMER (Assistant Artistic Director), a Los Angeles native, grew up as an active member in the Jewish community through Stephen Wise Temple. He attended Windward School in Mar Vista, where his acting career began in plays and musicals. After completing his BFA in theater at UC Santa Barbara, and an exciting year of living in Israel, Andrew took a dive into filmmaking and has since branched into production by helping prepare for distribution two feature films he has acted in: AMP Creative’s Highway to Havasu (dir. Jeff Janke) and Mockingbird Pictures’ The Sweet Life (dir. Rob Spera). Andrew also edits, directs, and is very excited to be coordinating this year’s iteration of NEXT @ The Braid, JWT’s Emerging Artists Fellowship. Find out more info at www.jewishwomenstheatre.org/next.

MARRA B. GAD (Writer) was born in New York and raised in Chicago. She is a writer and producer and now calls Los Angeles home. Ms. Gad is a proud graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds a master’s degree in modern Jewish history from Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University. Her memoir, The Color of Love – A Story of a Mixed Race Jewish Girl, will be published by Agate in November 2019.

MARISSA TIAMFOOK GEE (Writer) grew up in Brooklyn, NY, with an Ashkenazi Jewish New York mother and a half black, half Chinese Catholic father from Trinidad. She has always been active in the Jewish community, from being on the board of the Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN) to volunteering with IKAR, her current spiritual home. Marissa is a lawyer, teacher, runner, coach, and an outdoor adventure enthusiast. She runs, climbs, and explores every mountain and hidden trail she can find. She has traveled the world, worked in health care in Uganda (volunteering through American Jewish World Service), taught English in Asia, was a legal intern at the UN in Geneva, studied abroad in Jerusalem and Amsterdam, and backpacked through the Pacific Rim, Australia, and Europe. She now has a more conventional life (

ERIC GREENE (Producer) is a Los Angeles-based writer and civil rights activist. An associate director of communications at UCLA, Eric previously worked as senior policy advisor at the ACLU of Southern California and as Southern California regional director for the Progressive Jewish Alliance/Bend the Arc. He has also written or contributed to several books on race, the arts, and politics, and his first book, Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics and Popular Culture, was hailed by The Los Angeles Times as a “classic.” Eric studied religion at Wesleyan University and was a paralegal at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund before attending Stanford Law School, where he served as vice president of the Black Law Students Association and was a co-founder of the West Coast Conference on Progressive Lawyering. In addition to his efforts as an organizer in national and local Jews of Color communities, Eric has served as a consultant working with Jewish organizations on diversity and inclusion strategies.

KIMBERLY GREEN (Actor), an actress and dancer, was born in Seoul, Korea, and is graduating from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. Her theatre credits include It’s Just Sex, LA’s longest-running comedy, for which she won the 2017 Valley Theatre award for Best Featured Actress and was nominated at the 2018 NAACP Theatre Awards for Best Ensemble Cast. In 2017 she played Trina in B.L.A.C. Mail Productions’ seven-year anniversary show, Can God’s Love, which is nominated for Best Musical and Best Director for the 2019 NAACP Theatre Awards. Some of her TV and film credits include Lucifer (Fox), The Young and the Restless (CBS), and The Hot Chick, a Happy Madison Production. Kimberly is thrilled to be performing in her first JWT At-Home Salon Theatre and is converting to Judaism through the Judaism by Choice Program.

M. A. HOSEIN (Writer) is a third-year doctor-of-public-health candidate at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. For fun, Monique enjoys her recent return to running and books in all forms—paper, audio—and is also a jazz vocalist. Monique and her endlessly supportive husband are the parents of a joyful, inquisitive, and fearless girl in the first grade.

HEIDI MENDEZ (Actor) is a bilingual actor/director/educator who has worked professionally in Madrid, Mexico City, Utah, Texas, and now California. Her favorite roles include Lady Bracknell, Prospero, and most recently Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. Some favorite shows as director/choreographer include Cats, Working, Fiddler, and The Diary of Anne Frank. She is known as the Rapping Grandma to kids in juvie where she volunteered for two years which led her to be founder/director of ACT RISK NO MORE, a nonprofit whose mission is to rescue troubled teens through theater. Heidi is married to Nick (a Mormon bishop) and is the mother of three boys, resulting in her being afraid nothing. For fun, Heidi takes hip-hop classes and plays dress- up with her granddaughter. Education: BA in acting from BYU and MA in directing from Texas State, plus two Utah teaching certificates for theater and Spanish.

MARIA RAMOS-CHERTOK (Writer) is a writer, workshop leader, and coach who facilitates the Butterfly Series, a writing and creative arts workshop for women who want to explore what’s next. Her book, The Butterfly Series: Fifty-two Weeks of Inquiries for Transformation, was published in August 2018. She is finalizing her debut novel, Rosie’s Blues, inspired by the experience of her mother opening their family home in Hackensack, New Jersey, as a shelter for battered women and children. Maria’s manuscript won the 2018 Adult Fiction Mentorship prize from the Word for Diversity. She is a contributor to All the Women in My Family Sing: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Feb. 2018), edited by Deborah Santana, and She’s Got This! Essays on Standing Strong and Moving On (Feb. 2019), a Write-on Mamas project. Since 2014, she’s cohosted women’s salons showcasing women-of-color artists. For more info, visit: www. mariaramoschertok.com.

LARRY M. SANDERS (Writer) grew up in a small suburb of Detroit. He was raised by his mother, a single parent, and his grandmother “Big Ma,” a Choctaw Indian to whom he credits his love of learning and reading. He is a twice graduate of the University of Michigan and, before retiring in 2016, had a forty-year career in public service, providing planning and evaluation services to federal, state, and nonprofit social service agencies across the country. He converted to Judaism in 2011 on MLK Day after several years of studying Jewish history, culture, and thought. He lives in San Francisco with his best friend of 28 years, who also happens to be his husband. He spends his days reading, traveling, cooking, arranging flowers, and tending his orchids.