Ilana Stanger-Ross

(2020– )
President

Ilana joined the board in 2020 and soon after assumed the role of Vice President. At the same time, she represented the Hebrew School and Youth Group, co-founded the Anti-Racism and Equity Working Group, and served on the COVID-19 Committee. llana's first introduction to Emanu-EI was through a toddler group that Rabbi Harry led when her older daughter, Eva, was just about a year old. In the years that followed, Emanu El's warm and wise community continued to play a central role in her family's life; Eva is now a Hebrew School teacher, llana's second child, Tillie, is a Hebrew School TA, and her youngest child, Avi, is a student in Kitah Gimel. As President, she looks forward to continuing to sustain and strengthen our shul, and to foster a community that provides for a true sense of belonging to a diverse membership. Ilana works full-time as a Registered Midwife. She co-founded The Midwives Collective, a downtown midwifery clinic, eleven years ago. Ilana serves on the Inquiry Committee of the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives and is a Clinical Faculty member in the Division of Midwifery, UBC. She is also the author of two books, a novel, and a book of advice for pregnant people.

Ilan Handelsman

(2022-)
Director (Membership)
"Katie and I moved to Victoria from Vancouver in 2015. We wanted to be closer to nature and to have easier self-propelled routes to quiet wilderness spots. It’s been fantastic and we are loving it! I’m thrilled to be an active member of Congregation Emanu-El, which has become an integral part of our beautiful and supportive Victoria community. Arby and Lyla are in grade 1 and daycare respectively, so life is full and busy. We live near UVic and love sharing Shabbat dinners with friends and spending time in the local forests, cycling and canoeing."

Lee Henderson

(2020 - )
Director

Lee teaches creative writing at the University of Victoria. He has published three books with Penguin Canada—the story collection, The Broken Record Technique; the novel, The Man Game; and the novel, The Road Narrows As You Go. In 2021, he published a novella about Kurt Schwitters in exile in the book Disintegration in Four Parts, featuring three other authors, published by Coach House press. He won the BC Book Prize and the Vancouver Book Prize in 2009. His essay on language extinction and corporate English was published in the anthology, Finding the Words, edited by Jared Bland. Lee's fiction and art writing is regularly published in The Walrus and Border Crossings magazines, and other short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. He has curated exhibitions of contemporary art and experimental music and is honoured to be a member of the Board at Emanu-EI.

Murray Greiff

(2024– )
Treasurer
Murray is a member of Congregation Emanu-El’s Finance Committee and we are grateful for his familiarity with Emanu-El’s finances as he stands for election as Emanu-El’s Treasurer.
Murray and his Canadian wife, Joan, moved to Victoria from Santa Monica, CA in 2020. They were drawn to the vibrant, inclusive, and welcoming Congregation Emanu-El. Murray has an accounting and law degree and is a practicing tax attorney. Murray feels privileged to be a member of the Congregation Emanu-El Finance Committee. As a member of the State Bar of California Taxation Committee, Washington DC Delegation, Murray drafted two substantive papers and testified before the Internal Revenue Service. He has held numerous positions with the Pacific Southwest Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League. After being a National Commissioner for a number of years, Murray was made an Honorary Life National Commissioner.

Avishai Gilad

(2022–)
Director (House)

Avishai came from Israel to Canada with his family in 2012 to pursue a career in architecture. After finishing school in Vancouver, the family had moved to Victoria where Avishai found work, and joined Congregation Emanu El, with the children attending the Hebrew School and his partner, Noa, teaching. Currently, Noa is the Co-Director of the Hebrew School. The family has found a home at Congregation Emanu El and is honored to serve and give back to the community.
For the past few years, Avishai has been a member of the House committee in which he strives to put his professional expertise to good use in the ongoing process of maintaining the shul and designing new and useful spaces for the congregation.

Graham Dragushan

Cemetery Director
Graham Dragushan and his family have lived in Victoria for many years. In the early 1980s, the family joined Congregation Emanu-El and have been members ever since.
After a career in the provincial public service focusing on land use policy, Graham retired in 2004, and attended the Camosun College Fine Woodworking Course. He has subsequently crafted many pieces of fine furniture, and woodworking continues to be his hobby. Graham has been a volunteer at the synagogue in many capacities. He has participated as a member of the Cemetery Committee for over 10 years. Graham’s years of service on that committee has prepared him well to serve as Congregation Emanu-El’s Cemetery Director.
Graham is married to Jean, and together they have two grown children (Aaron and Ellen) and three grandchildren.

Lincoln Z. Shlensky

(2020 - )
First Vice-President (Communications)

Lincoln joined Congregation Emanu-EI with his family in 2011 and loves the sense of community he feels here among congregants of so many diverse backgrounds, identities, and ways of connecting to their Jewishness.

Lincoln has served on the board 2013-14 and 2020-present in a variety of roles, including web designer and sysadmin (2013-17); interim Finance Committee chair (2020); Communications Committee chair (2021-present); Fundraising Committee co-chair (2024-present); and First Vice President (2022-present).

Among a variety of other community service activities, Lincoln was the programmer (2014-16) and director (2016-18) of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival; he is a longtime juror for the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival; he has served on several organisational boards over the years, including Berkeley Hillel, the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, and the James Bay Child Care Society.

Lincoln is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria, where he conducts research, supervises graduate students, and teaches in the fields of postcolonial literature, Jewish and diaspora studies, and media studies. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003.

Jenn Moss

(2022 - )
Second Vice-President

Walking through her neighbourhood shortly after she arrived in 2016, Jenn learned from a friendly neighbour, Leah Levi, that she runs a Hebrew school at Congregation Emanu-El. Since that chance meeting, her two kids have attended the school and she has developed a strong bond with the community. Having been involved with the Pesach Market and participating on the Parents Advisory Committee for Hebrew School, it became a natural next step for Jenn to join the board in 2022 as a director and liaison to the Hebrew School.

Professionally, she manages her husband's busy medical practice. And outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family: taking her kids to their various activities, hiking, biking, skiing and travelling.

She is truly grateful for the close friends and strong connections she has made in this community. It has made her committed to giving back to Emanu-El, and she is looking forward to her new role as co-Vice President.

Andrew Gow

(2024– )
Secretary

Andrew Gow was Chair of the CEE House Committee in 2019-2020 and again (on an interim basis, for half a year) in 2022-23.

As House Chair, Andrew oversaw the construction of Emanu-El’s Laurel and Gidi Nahshon Reading Room, which serves the community as library and as classroom space for our growing Hebrew School.

Member of the House committee since 2019.
Oversaw the basement renovations during his term as House Chair.
Member of CEE since 2015.
Retired from academia in 2018.
Helps with the shul’s Morasha classes from time to time and is teaching our Intro to Judaism course this spring.
Served on the Vic West Community Association Board of Directors; and as co-convenor of the Gorge Swimfest Society.

His non-shul interests are motorcycling and motorcycle restoration, camping, swimming, and reading.

Frances Rosenberg

(2022 - )
Director
Frances is a retired physician, a Jew by choice and a Congregation Emanu-El member since 2012. In 2015, Frances began producing our periodic bulletin, Koleinu. Later that year she joined the newsletter team and was the online editor from August 2017 to November 2021.
From 2018–2020, Frances served as the Communications Chair for Congregation Emanu-El Board of Directors and for the past year as the Secretary. In her deep, dark distant past, she produced newsletters for the National Council of Jewish Women and the Federation of Medical Women—bringing both newsletters from paste-up to desktop publication.
Deeper still, Frances is a biochemist with a great respect for procedure. Frances served as Treasurer for the Annual Conference of Canadian Clinical Chemists on two occasions—Vancouver 1985, Whistler 1995—both of which were successful educational and financial events. For the past four years, she has been a member of the Communications Committee with a focus on supporting the administration in the use of ShulCloud, our synagogue information system. Frances leads a highly successful book club at the Monterey Recreation Centre, and she doggedly persists with vocal training in the hope that she’ll be ready when a space opens in the heavenly choir.

Elisheva Gray

(2024 - )
Gabbai
A Hebrew class taught by Gidi Nahshon, z''l, 20 years ago was Elisheva's gateway into the community. She has been learning and growing ever since. Over the years, she has been the editor of Koleinu, helped to tutor B'nei Mitzvah students, learned to leyn Torah, chant Haftorah and lead services as well as teaching others how to lead. She has been a member of the RSC committee for about 15 years, a member of the Cemetery Committee for over a decade and a member of the Victoria Shoah Project since its inception.

Elisheva lived in Jerusalem in 2016-17, where she studied at the pluralistic yeshiva, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. She also studied Hebrew in Ulpan at the University of Haifa. She participated in a seven-month fellowship with Pardes on the topic of conflict resolution. She currently studies daf yomi (page a day of Talmud) with a teacher and class in Israel.

Moving from Jewish law to provincial law, Elisheva works for the Legislative Assembly as a senior editor at Hansard. She looks forward to contributing to the continued flourishing of the warm and welcoming community that is Congregation Emanu-El.

Gypsy Fisher

(2022 - )
Director (Social Action)

After many years as a member of the congregation, Gypsy is honoured to join the Emanu-El Board of Directors and represent the Social Action committees. Gypsy and her husband Jordan joined the congregation in 2005 just before Rabbi Harry married them. They are now proud parents to two children who attend the Hebrew school. She is thankful to be a part of the Emanu-El community where she has made many great friends over the years.
In her professional life Gypsy is a consultant specializing in Water Resource Management, which serves as an outlet for her passion for water and the environment. She is looking forward to becoming more involved supporting the local Social Action opportunities and Emanu-El community.

Sam Godfrey

(2014 - )
Past President

Sam Godfrey became the Vice President of Congregational Emanu-El in 2018, after serving four years as a Director, including two as Chair of the Fiscal Programming Committee. He has a deep love for the Jewish faith and history, and a connection to the Shul dating back to the 1980s and Rabbi Victor Reinstein.

After his bar-mitzvah and completing high school he moved to the far cold reaches of Toronto throughout the '90s, where he gained an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and a Law Degree from Osgoode Hall, York University. In Toronto he worked for the Law Insurance Corporation of Ontario, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, and Parkdale Community Legal Services.

Sam returned to our kehillah in 2000, and was married to his partner by Rabbi Harry in 2003. Sam's son had his Bar Mitzvah at our shul last year, and his daughter is in our Hebrew school.

Sam currently works as a Senior Ministerial Assistant in the BC government.

As President, Sam wants to help Congregation Emanu-el continue to thrive: he cherishes the tradition, spirit and energy of the community and believes that he can best contribute by using his experience and skills to advance our good governance.

Dahlia Beck

(2023– )
Director

Dahlia joined Emanu-El in 2016, and found the congregation was engaged in educational, social, and cultural activities that resonate with her, and in which she wished to partake—such as sponsoring refugees, Adult Education, caring for the vulnerable members of our society, and community-building activities. Dahlia chose to join the Outreach Committee, in the hope not only to keep in touch with members with special needs, but also to create in-person encounters (outside the mainstream) for the sake of inclusiveness.
Dahlia was born & raised in Israel, pursued graduate studies in Toronto & Calgary (Second/Foreign Language and Curriculum Studies) and has taught English as a Second Language to adults for decades. She cannot imagine doing otherwise.

Solomon Michaels

(2024– )
Director

Solomon and his husband John moved to Victoria from Seattle in late 2019. They live near UVic, where they provide full-service care for their ancient grumpy cat and elderly service dog. They love to host dinners, play board games, and surround themselves with friends and found family.

Solomon can often be found reading, knitting, gardening, or playing around with wood in his workshop. He especially loves to get creative in the kitchen, most recently pioneering the “gingerbread sukkah” and is currently working on growing his own gluten-free oats.

The warmth of the connections made through Emanu-El have been key in making Victoria feel like home. Solomon looks forward to growing in his roles on the Cemetery and the Outreach Committees, and as a new member of the Board. He’s excited to see what comes next.