Dr. Elana Zimand

Dr. Elana Zimand loves watching the personal growth of students as they become "part of the Jewish conversation." "The students are challenging, require me to think about myself and my Jewishness," says Elana, "and I have my own private chevruta with the texts. I also love engaging with the other teachers." Overall she says it is stimulating and keeps her alive Jewishly and nourishes her teaching soul. Elana's greatest challenge about teaching in the Mini-School is finding the time to do it.

Elana has been teaching Ethics for three years in the Atlanta Mini-School. She has a BA in religion from Barnard College with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Albany, SUNY. Elana also did two years of part-time study at Matan in Jerusalem.

In addition to being a teacher, she works as the Director of Clinical Services at Virtually Better where they develop, test, use and sell virtual reality applications to mental health. "Because my professional life does not allow me to teach much, nor to express my Judaism in the way that teaching does," she says, "teaching in the Mini-school was a great way to give myself something else to do and receive the spiritual sustenance I am looking for."

Her experience of teaching for the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School has given her a great deal of respect for people who choose this path of self-improvement and growth in their adult life. Advice she would give a new Mini-School teacher is to have enthusiasm, energy, and knowledge, consider every question, and be open-minded.

"Elana is incredibly knowledgeable, yet at the same time so human and approachable in her entire presentation and demeanor," says Holli Levinson, Program Director of the Atlanta Mini-School. "She excels in perhaps the most important quality of a Melton teacher-- the ability to connect with her students on some fundamental level. Elana's students, almost to a person, see her as a role model of how to "be Jewish" in the world."

She met her husband, Simcha Pearl, in elementary school. "My father was the rabbi at his Bar Mitzvah. His mother taught my brothers in first grade and taught me Shira (Hebrew singing) throughout my school years." In the little spare time she has, Elana loves to read, Israeli folk dancing, needlepoint, and crochet. She has three great children - Talia (17), Adin (14), and Uri (11).

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