Biography

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Stephen Hazan Arnoff graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA from Brandeis University (1994) and received his MA in Midrash as a Wexner Graduate Fellow from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2002) where he is currently pursuing a doctorate. He co-founded the Artist Workshop Experiment (AWE), a year-long program for artists in New York and Jerusalem (2000-2002) supported by the Samuel Bronfman Foundation. His projects in “New Jewish Culture” include The Tale of a Boy Who Would Be King, a rock opera and curriculum inspired by the Book of Jonah and funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Israel’s 2^nd Television and Radio Authority, the Immerman Family Foundation, and the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland. He was the Founding Director of Artists Networks and Programming at the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92^nd Street Y (2002-2005) – overseeing the Theater, Gallery, and Artists-in-Residence programs – and has served on the faculty of Brandeis-Bardin Institute (2001-2005), Pardes (Summer 2005-7), JTS (2004-Present), and Face to Face/Faith to Faith of the Auburn Theological Seminary (2001) in addition to presenting as an invited speaker at conferences including Limmud (UK and US), the GA of the United Jewish Communities, the World Council of Jewish Communal Service Quadrennial, Lishmah (New York), and Highway 61 Revisited: The International Bob Dylan Symposium (University of Minnesota). Hazan Arnoff was Managing Editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture (www.zeek.net) from 2005-07, a print and Internet publication with 100,000 monthly readers on-line. He writes on art, religion, culture, and education for a wide variety of academic and popular publications with work published in Hebrew, English, and Italian, and has been awarded the Rockower Jewish Press Award for Jewish Arts & Criticism (American Jewish Press Association, 2006) and the New Voices Prize (Jewish Family and Life!, 2005). Stephen recently completed two years as a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, Israel and is now Executive Director of the 14^th Street Y of The Educational Alliance. He is married to writer and theater director Basmat Hazan. They have three daughters and a son and live in New York City.