Our Staff
Noa Kushner (she/her)
Founder + Rabbi
Rabbi Noa Kushner founded The Kitchen in 2011 in response to friends who were looking for an informal, transformative shabbat experience that they couldn’t find. Along the way, she crashed head first into what has now been well documented as a generational trend away from many established religious institutions. The Kitchen quickly grew from a local shabbat experiment into an active doorway for San Francisco’s Gen X and Millenials looking for serious Jewish life. Through an emphasis on first-hand experience and “doing jewish” over pedigree, The Kitchen has become an international resource, growing to serve thousands of modern families annually in seven years.
In working with IDEO and by emphasizing design + communications, The Kitchen has also changed the ways religion is perceived and integrated into daily life. After graduating with a degree in Religious Studies at Brown, Kushner was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1998. She then served as a Hillel Rabbi for both Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford University.
The Kitchen has been featured internationally in Ha’aretz, Tablet, The Forward, and Medium. Kushner has been profiled in SF Magazine’s Power Issue and the final Newsweek / Daily Beast: Rabbis to Watch list. Her written work appears in many publications including, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and the Prayers of Awe series.
Noa is married to Michael Lezak, the Rabbi at GLIDE. Together they have three daughters: Zella, Bluma and Minna.
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Spencer Weiss (he/him)
Executive Director
Spencer Weiss is originally from Long Island, New York. After graduating from Binghamton University, he began his professional career in business strategy and technology consulting with Accenture in its Capital Markets Business Unit. Spencer gained his business foundation there with clients such as JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and GE Capital.
After seven years in the corporate world, Spencer followed his passion for food and beverage and began a career in hospitality. Working his way up to the Michelin starred restaurants in New York City, he then followed a unique opportunity to move with his wife Tammi and daughter Magnolia, to the Napa Valley and join the burgeoning Bay Area restaurant scene.
Most recently, Spencer was Director of Operations for the Quince & Co Restaurant Group in San Francisco. After years of developing close relationships with guests and communities in hospitality, Spencer has found his calling at The Kitchen.
Spencer’s connection to Jewish life has been cultivated by his extended family on the East Coast. His fond family memories of holiday gatherings have drawn him to The Kitchen, where he is excited to partner with the team.
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Asher Shasho Levy (he/him)
Hazzan
A native of Los Angeles, Asher Shasho Levy is an accomplished oud player, multi-instrumentalist, hazzan, educator, and scholar of Sephardic tradition.
An honors graduate of the University of Southern California, Asher has performed internationally in a variety of musical settings dedicated to the musical heritage of Syrian Jewry, where his paternal family originates. At a young age, Asher began studying the oud, Sephardic music and hazzanut with his father, Rabbi Jay Shasho Levy.
Growing up in the Los Angeles Sephardic community, Asher was blessed with the opportunity to study with learned hazzanim, teachers, and elders of Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, and Persian backgrounds, from whom he learned hazzanut and a wide variety of piyyutim and baqashot and music. For many years, Asher collaborated with Hazzan Hillel Tigay and the IKAR davening team, introducing elements of Sephardic music and tefillah to the IKAR community. Most recently, Asher has served as artist-in-residence at Valley Beth Shalom Synagogue, artist/researcher in residence at the HUC Jewish Language Project, teacher at Milken Community Schools, and Jewish educator throughout the Los Angeles area.
Drawing from his Syrian background and a multiplicity of influences from through the Jewish diaspora and beyond, Asher brings a huge wealth of prayers, melodies, and traditions, helping us to explore new possibilities.
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Joel Abramovitz (he/him)
Senior Family Educator
A long-time Kitchen member, Joel previously served as Judaic Studies Principal and the Middle School Principal at the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School on the north Peninsula. Prior to that, Joel was a long-time teacher of middle school Judaic Studies. Joel loves to teach and learn Bible, analyze Jewish comedy, and think about how his work as a Jew and Jewish educator intersects with social change. He is also deeply involved in the local community organizing work, focusing on criminal justice reform.
Joel is a graduate of the DeLeT (Day School Leadership through Teaching) Program at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, and received his Master’s degree in Jewish Education from HUC-LA. Despite receiving much of his education in Southern California, Joel is a proud fourth-generation Bay Arean and lives in Berkeley with his partner Dominique. When not at The Kitchen, Joel can be found in his kitchen, baking or studying cookbooks as if they were sacred texts.
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Sophie Stimola (she/her)
Director of Marketing & Communications
Sophie grew up in San Francisco with a deep love and appreciation for the city. She studied Business Entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco, but credits her passion and tenacity for life as what has led her to a career in community building. Sophie has worked on the brand marketing teams at Modern Citizen, dosist, and Caliva, creating networks of brand loyalists and enthusiasts. She has a passion for engaging the community through experiential events and marketing campaigns.
Her connection to Judaism has always remained faithful but it wasn’t until she joined The Kitchen as a member in 2016 with her Jew-ish husband Anthony, that she truly learned how to do Jewish. Rabbi Noa married Sophie & Anthony in May 2017 and the rest is history.
When not working you can find Sophie training her rescue dog Morris, trying out new recipes from America’s Test Kitchen, or with making friends anywhere and everywhere.
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Kayla Pollak (they/them)
Youth & Young Adult Program Director
Kayla loves building community at The Kitchen. They have long been passionate about how we can be more caring with each other and close to God.
Before joining The Kitchen, Kayla worked on the development team at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and as a public benefits paralegal at New York Legal Assistance Group. They have experience as a collaborative leader at Romemu, a spiritual community in Manhattan, and the Lake Merritt Moishe House, a Jewish community hub for young adults.
Kayla studied Human Rights and Jewish Ethics at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary and they are originally from Chumash land outside of Los Angeles.
Kayla’s most formative experiences include being an older sister, winters in NYC, and every time they go in the ocean.
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