Meet the Core Team
These are the NHC Volunteers responsible for envisioning Summer Institute
Ceidlen Beller
Ceidlen Beller has been involved in the havurah movement since 1979, and with the NHC since 1981. Enthusiastic participation led to eventually six havurot in Rochester, NY where she resided for 40 years, being on the organizing committee of the NHC Canadian-American Retreat for 22 years, doing the site selection that took the NHC to Franklin Pierce University for more than a decade, co-chairing a Summer Institute in 2004, and serving on the NHC board off and on over a couple of decades.
In her other life, she had a family (two sons and their families are still involved in NHC) and worked for 38 years at the University of Rochester. In 1994 she started designing and crocheting kipot, which is still a big interest. She moved to Baltimore, MD in 2015 to be near family, and still does volunteer work for NHC.
Yonathan Reches
Yonathan Reches is a hide worker and scribe based in St. Paul, MN, where he lives with his spouse, child, and dog. He founded the Kedusha Project, a collective of artisans and scribes dedicated to creating sacred texts and ritual objects through practices that are ethical, sustainable, and rooted in reverence for the life that sustains them. Yonathan’s work bridges traditional craftsmanship and contemporary values, recovering and reimagining methods long held within insular communities. He produced the world’s first egalitarian-made tefillin and continues to pioneer new work, including the world's first megillot written on giraffe parchment and The Torah of Every Living Thing—a Torah being written on parchment made from ethically recovered hides.
Kati Steiner
Kati Steiner is a Special Education teacher in the Philadelphia Public School system by school-day, and a singer, service leader, holy text chanter, crafter, artisan, and keeper of sacred scrolls by night, weekend, and summer. She has been involved with the NHC since 2019 at Chesapeake Retreat and at Summer Institute in 2019 as a Zeitler fellow, a direct result of her partner's nudging that was very well worth it. Kati enjoys rocking funky hand-made earrings, keeping detailed spreadsheets on a variety of things, and prepping fancy platters of food at her shul in Philadelphia, PA.