Rabbinic Council - Consejo Rabínico - Conselho Rabínico

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Rabbi April Villarreal (she/they) is a Senior Coach and Content & Program Associate with Pedagogy of Partnership. She has worked in Jewish education for thirteen years as a classroom teacher and administrator in Jewish day schools during which they were awarded the Covenant Foundation’s Pomegranate Prize for emerging Jewish educators. She has also worked as an Education Consultant for various Jewish education organizations throughout North America. At the center of all of her work is the belief in Judaism’s ability to help people discover and nourish their best selves.  April has studied in multiple batei midrash and completed a full course of rabbinic study under Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo. A graduate of UCLA in the Study of Religion, she also holds a Master’s Degree in Teaching from the American Jewish University.  

Rabbi Juán Mejía (he/him) was born in Bogotá, Colombia, to a Catholic family. Discovering the Jewish roots of his family and falling in love with Judaism led Juán to convert, and later to pursue the rabbinate. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2009. For the past 15 years, Rabbi Juán has been working with communities in Latin America and creating Torah resources in Spanish both in print and online. He is passionate about working with people who are interested in learning about Judaism. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, Rabbi Abby Jacobson, and their three Jewtino children.

Rabbi Mónica Gomery (she/her) was ordained at Hebrew College in 2017, and serves on the clergy team of Kol Tzedek, a vibrant justice-oriented synagogue in Philadelphia. She was raised by her Venezuelan Ashkenazi family in Boston and Caracas. Mónica is passionate about supporting people who have been denied access to, disconnected from, and marginalized by ancient and ancestral spiritual traditions to gain access to these traditions as a resource for empowerment and transformation in their lives. She has fulfilled this mission by teaching as a faculty member at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, and as a member of the founding leadership team of Let My People Sing! Mónica has served as a prison chaplain, a geriatric chaplain, and an educator and prayer leader at numerous organizations. She is the author of three books of poetry, and is at work on a novel. She is excited and grateful to sing, study Torah, and build community with other Latin Jews through Jewtina y Co.  

Rabbi Sofia Zway was born in Ecuador to South African parents. At the age of eight, she moved to South Africa and began exploring her Jewish identity as a camper and counselor at Netzer South Africa, the Reform Zionist Youth Movement, where she first discovered her love for Jewish Education. A lifelong learner, she has also been an avid Limmudnik at conferences across the world.

Sofia received her Honors degree in Applied Theatre from the University of Cape Town and her Master of Arts and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She’s had the privilege of serving diverse communities in Cape Town, New York, Los Angeles and Las Cruces, NM. She currently serves as the rabbi of Base LA, a pluralistic home-based Jewish community, which she runs alongside her husband, Rabbi Brett Kopin. 

A DONA-trained birth doula, Sofia is passionate about the intersection of Judaism and birth and strives to incorporate birth work into her rabbinate. In her spare time you can find her playing with her daughter, Dahlia, eating ice-cream, making puns, creating new rituals, and watching trashy RomComs.