Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, Co-Founder

Rabbi Schulweis is the founding chairman of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, an organization that identifies and offers grants to those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews threatened by the agents of Nazi savagery.

In 2004, after the revelation of the slaughter and unrest in Darfur, Sudan, he founded Jewish World Watch, a synagogue-based organization dedicated to raising both awareness and funds to protest the first genocide of the 21st Century, and bring vital assistance to the victims of its unrest.

Rabbi Schulweis is the author of Approaches to the Philosophy of Religion, Evil and the Morality of God, For Those Who Can't Believe, Finding Each Other in Judaism, In God's Mirror, and most recently Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey. An editor and contributor to a number of magazines, Rabbi Schulweis is the spiritual leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California.

Janice Kamenir-Reznik, Co-Founder, President

Janice Kamenir-Reznik is Co-founder and President of Jewish World Watch. For more than two decades prior to starting Jewish World Watch, Janice practiced law as a partner with the firm of Reznik & Reznik and then at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler and Marmaro.  She received her BA and JD from UCLA, a Masters in Social Work from USC and a Masters in Jewish Communal Services from Hebrew Union College.  In the 1970’s Janice was Executive Director of the Commission on Soviet Jewry for the Jewish Federation.  As a lawyer, Janice served as President of California Women Lawyers, the statewide women’s bar association; she was also President of the California Women’s Law Center, a public interest organization advocating for the rights of women and girls.  Janice has served as a trustee of the Los Angeles County Bar and of the California State Bar’s Trust Fund, and is currently a Commissioner serving on the Los Angeles County Economy and Efficiency Commission.  Janice is a longtime lay leader at UCLA Hillel, having been the first chair of the UCLA Hillel Advisory Board and chair of its $12 million capital campaign to build the current UCLA Hillel building; she also oversaw the construction and total development of the site.  Janice is a graduate of the Wexner Heritage Foundation Leadership Program. As a County Commissioner, Janice spearheaded the establishment of the award-winning Self-Help Legal Access Centers in Los Angeles courthouses, to assist mostly poor, unrepresented litigants in accessing the judicial system.

Her most recent venture is Jewish World Watch, an organization she jointly founded with Rabbi Harold Schulweis.  Through Jewish World Watch thousands have been mobilized to fight the genocide in Darfur, and $4,000,000 has been committed to direct aid for the  refugees in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic. Janice traveled to the refugee camps at the Chad/Darfur border as part of a team to evaluate the effectiveness of the Jewish World Watch projects.  In fall, 2009, Jewish World Watch decided that the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo demanded its attention.  Janice led a JWW fact-finding delegation to Congo.  Upon their return the JWW Congo NOW! Campaign was launched.

She has been married to Benjamin for 36 years; together they have 3 children, Yoni , Devi and Sami.

• Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug
  Executive Director
  
• Peter Marcus
  Vice President
  
• Marcy Rainey
  Treasurer
  
• Honey Amado
  
• Julie Bram
• Diana Buckhantz
• John Fishel
  
• Stuart Gabriel
  
• Diane Kabat
  
• Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky (Congregation B'nai David-Judea, Los Angeles)
  
• Rabbi Alan Lachtman (Temple Beth David, Temple City)
• Shelby Layne
• Sheryl Layne
  
• Rabbi Joshua Levine-Grater (Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, Pasadena)
  
• Joy Picus
  
• Rabbi Joel Rembaum (Temple Beth Am, Los Angeles)
• Susan Saltz
  
• Rabbi Richard Spiegel (Temple Etz Chaim, Thousand Oaks)
• David Straus
  
• Sheila Wasserman
• Harriet Zaretsky

The Synagogue Advisory Council (SAC), which meets quarterly to address all matters of concern to Jewish World Watch, is comprised of the rabbi as well as up to two lay representatives of each JWW member congregation.