The City Congregation is managed by members who are elected by the community to two-year terms. The board of directors meets once a month and any congregation member who would like to attend a meeting or bring an issue before the board is invited to email us for more information.
Susan Ryan has been a member of The City Congregation since 1996, and has been on the Board since 2007. She is also the Congregation’s designee to the national board of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and a member of the SHJ’s Executive Committee. A native New Yorker with a lifelong passion for the history of the city she loves, Susan is currently the proprietor of Fab 4 NYC Walking Tours, and is a published writer of fiction, features, news, reviews and editorials. Susan is also the co-host of the travel DVD “John Lennon’s New York,”, and is on the staff of the annual Fest for Beatles Fans conventions in New York and Chicago. She currently resides in Riverdale with her family.
Kathy Artis found SHJ by happenstance in 2017 and was immediately on board, and joined as a member at TCC shortly after. After attending events casually, she moved into a volunteer capacity for various events with pride!
As of 2020 she joined the Shabbat Committee (more pride!), then the Board (pride again!), as well as the Caring Committee (caring pride!). Having grown up in a mostly cultural but not community based genre of judaism, Kathy is overwhelmed with happiness to be involved with a community that shares in her values and expression of her culture.
Kathy currently works as a 1:1 aide for individuals on the spectrum within the behavioral therapy field, with plans to return to school to pursue a career in psychology.
Leah Schneider joined The City Congregation in 2019. She grew up in a Humanistic Jewish household and when she decided to get more involved in religion as an adult, TCC was the only congregation she considered. Leah joined the board in 2021. She enjoys Shabbat services and is a member of the Shabbat Committee. Leah works in data technology and helps the Congregation with database management. She hopes to be involved in the congregation for many years to come.
Isabel J. Kaplan, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Scarsdale, NY. Isabel has been a member of the Board of Trustees of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism since 2000. She has served in many roles including KidSchool administrator and Co-president, and is currently the Director of the B’Mitzvah program. She has two adult children. Isabel lives in Westchester with her husband and enjoys knitting, reading and hiking in her spare time.
David Klein is the COO and Senior Executive Vice President at the New York Film Academy. David received his MFA in Film Directing from New York University in 1995. David has worked closely with NBC News, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York City Public Schools to create innovative media arts programs. In his current position at the Academy, he oversees the operations, development and delivery of programs in the various disciplines taught including Acting for Film, Filmmaking, Musical Theatre, Broadcast Journalism, and Cinematography at the Academy’s locations across the globe.
David and his wife Jennifer have been TCC members since 2010, and their son and daughter attended TCC’s Kidschool and completed the Bar/Bat Mitzvah program. As trained vocalists, David and Jennifer are also TCC’s High Holiday Song Leaders.
Samantha Bassler is an academic, a musician, and a musicologist with multiple diagnoses of neurodivergence and disability. She works as an adjunct professor of music history and music theory at both Rutgers University at Newark and New York University Steinhardt, and runs her own private music studio, Stellar Music Space, in her neighbourhood of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Originally raised as an evangelical Christian, Samantha had a complicated relationship with religion growing up, and eventually found her home in Humanistic Judaism after years of researching humanism and Jewish values. She completed her adoption in 2022, after studying one-on-one with Rabbi Tzemah and immersing at the West Side Mivkah.
Titus Chirchir has been a member of The City Congregation since 2016, and joined the Board in 2022. Born in Kenya, Titus came to the United States for his college education, majoring in Physics. Professionally, he is a Data Scientist and is passionate about statistics and algorithms. Beyond his professional pursuits, Titus is deeply committed to community building and philanthropic activities in his hometown in Kenya. He currently resides in New Jersey with his beautiful wife, Rachel Manning.
Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born writer, non-profit educator and climate activist. The author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, (Write Bloody Press, 2023) she is a 2023 poetry recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, and the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. When she isn’t writing or thinking up ways to expand arts provision in New York, you can find her protesting the climate emergency. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two daughters, who were both bat mitzvahed at TCC.
Sybil Maimin discovered City Congregation and its non-theistic approach to Judaism by chance. She joined 12 years ago, and it has been a perfect fit. She has served on the Rabbi Liaison Committee and the Rabbi Search Committee, and has headed the Board Nominating Committee and the Shabbat Programming/Formatting Committee. Currently chair of the Membership Committee, she is working to ensure that everyone at TCC feels valued and many are inspired to deepen their involvement. A former editor of college texts at Random House, she now audits courses in the Lifelong Learning Program at Columbia. Sybil is the mother of two grown sons and grandma to two delightful five-year old twin boys.
Lina Miller joined City Congregation in 2016 and was elected to the board in 2020. Though she is a native New Yorker, TCC is her first Jewish congregation. She believes that “knowledge is power,” and as a member of both the board and the IT Committee, her goal is to help TCC use data to improve engagement within the congregation and outreach beyond it. By day, Lina is a database manager and professional nitpicker; by night, she enjoys theater, live music, and stopping to pet every single dog she encounters.
Remy Shaber is a dance teaching artist in NYC public schools. She is passionate about building community and empowering children through movement and creative process. Prior to teaching, Remy worked in arts and nonprofit management throughout the northeast. Born and raised in NYC, Remy was grateful to discover Humanistic Judaism as an adult upon returning to NYC with her husband and one-year-old son. She enthusiastically joined City Congregation in 2012 and has two children enrolled in TCC KidSchool, where she is active with the KidSchool Committee.
Ben Sternhell is the first board member who literally grew up in The City Congregation. He joined at age 5, more than 20 years ago, and celebrated his bar mitzvah in 2006. Today he is a pilot, working as a flight instructor at Westchester County Airport in White Plains and planning to move to a regional airline in the next year. His other passions are Broadway musicals—he trained as a lighting designer—and trains. If you’re into train videos, check out his YouTube channel: NYCTA Railfan.
Richard Strean received a secular Jewish education as a child, explored many corners of the Jewish world as an adult, and has found his Jewish home at The City Congregation. He volunteers at High Holiday services, mentors in the Kids’ School, and serves on the Finance Committee. Now retired, he spent his career in education, teaching every level from middle school to graduate school. He continues to spend time working at a children’s camp during the summer.
