Teachers at the Well

Rabbi David A. Ingber is the Founder and Senior Rabbi at Romemu, NYC, a community he founded in 2008 that today has over 600 households. Rabbi Ingber is a disciple of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, famed founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and was ordained by Reb Zalman in 2004. Rabbi Ingber serves on the faculty for the Wexner Heritage Program, The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Israel, The 92nd Street Y’s program for Rabbinic Entrepreneurship, and other institutions. He was an AJWS Global Justice Fellow, and a Rabbinic Fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative. Rabbi Ingber has lectured extensively on the topics of spirituality, theology, Jewish mysticism, prayer, and meditation. 

Rabbi Ingber’s distinct approach to Torah, rabbinical teaching, and ritualistic practice is informed by his own personal seeking and learning from a wide cross-section of sacred traditions and faiths. He is enlightened by Jewish mysticism and Chassidut, fusing these beliefs with those of other ancient philosophies and world views. Particular influences include 18th Century Kabbalist and Founder of Chassidut, Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov; the great 19th Century Ishbitzer Rebbe, R. Mordechai Leiner; and leading 20th Century thinkers from Kabbalist, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook to psychologist, Carl Jung.

Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses is a Rabbi at Romemu as well as the Director of Lifelong Learning at Romemu. She was the first woman from the Syrian Jewish community to be ordained as a Rabbi. She graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1995, where she was awarded several fellowships and a prize for academic excellence. Before coming to Romemu, she served as Co-Director of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship, Scholar in Residence at UJA Federation, and Senior Educator at The Curriculum Initiative. In 2007 she was named one of fifty top rabbis by the Washington Post online. In 2019, she was inducted into the Brooklyn Jewish Hall of Fame. She and her husband, Larry, an investigative journalist, have three children and live on the Upper West Side of New York City, a stone’s throw from Romemu!

Ana Levy-Lyons is a writer, teacher, speaker, composer, spiritual mentor, and rabbinical student in the Jewish Renewal movement (Aleph). She is the author of The Secret Despair of the Secular Left (2025) and No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments (2019), as well as a Substack publication, “The Journey Home” (analevylyons.substack.com). 

Ana holds an MDiv from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and served UU congregations for almost two decades, including twelve years as senior minister of First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Jeff, and teenage twins. 

Wendy Miles, a doctor by trade, has always loved studying and speaking Hebrew. She is a lifelong student of Torah and regularly chants Torah and Haftorah in synagogue. She has taught Hebrew privately to many and is excited to have the opportunity of teaching Hebrew at Romemu, offering the keys to the Jewish heritage to a wider circle of people!