New Member Profiles:
Sarah Stone
So happy to have found CNS! My spouse, Ron Nyren, and I first came to Shavuot last year and fell for CNS: the wildly beautiful, loving, funny, serious, and supportive community; the rich, meaningful way everyone creates services, holidays, classes, and committees together; and the pleasures of sharing Kiddush and after-Kiddush talks. We became members in August.
I come from a mixed family of Polish/Russian Jewish socialists on my mother’s side and Quaker/Methodist farmers/teachers on my father’s. (Bi+, she/they, still learning Hebrew.) I’m a novelist, creative writing instructor, activist, former LABA fellow, Jewish Studio Project creative facilitator, activist, aunt, and great-aunt (twenty-three nieces and nephews and ten greats!). A lot of my life takes place in the dream worlds of fiction. Published books include Hungry Ghost Theater—a novel in pieces about family dynamics, theater, addiction, mental illness, Jewish history, Abu Ghraib, Dante’s Inferno, the neuroscience of empathy, world hunger, and the colliding mythologies of six different hells—as well as an intermediate/advanced fiction-writing textbook (with Ron). And, this month, Marriage to the Sea, linked novellas with more family connections and misconnections, love stories, ghosts, sustainability activists in Paris, experimental dance theater about the sins and virtues at the Venice Biennale, a trip through a dream underworld, and characters following wild dreams to find a pathway through grief.
I’ve taught in MFA and community college programs, at UC Berkeley, and for Stanford Continuing Studies. Worked as a psych aide in a locked facility, graveyard-shift waitress in the restaurant where everyone went after they’d been thrown out of all the bars in town, semi-unofficial observer at the U.S. Department of State’s junior officer training course, and office help in an apparently haunted massage/bodywork school in the Santa Cruz mountains. I’ve lived in Seoul and Bujumbura, written for and taught on Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute. Very glad to be here with you all now.
Ron Nyren
I love the liturgy, the singing, the learning, the conversations, and the community at Netivot. I grew up in small-town Connecticut in a Swedish-American family of devout Congregationalists; my three siblings all still attend the same church where my 91-year-old mother and my late father first met in youth group. After I graduated from college, I moved to the Bay Area and drifted away from religion. Sarah and I met in the 1990s while getting our MFAs in creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I wrote short stories and the libretto for a musical about the modernist poet Mina Loy and her Dadaist poet-boxer husband. When we returned to the Bay Area, we explored different faith traditions. About a decade and a half ago, Sarah wanted to return to her Jewish roots. Although I worried the learning curve would be too steep, we spent time at Chochmat HaLev, the East Bay JCC, Urban Adamah, and the Jewish Studio Project. My relationship to Judaism is deepening at CNS.
We’ve lived in El Cerrito since 2001. In addition to teaching fiction-writing through Stanford Continuing Studies, I also write articles about architecture, sustainability, resilience, affordable housing, and urban design.
My first novel, The Book of Lost Light, was published in 2020 and tells the story of a family uprooted by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake who find themselves living in tents in a Berkeley backyard with a group of refugee artists, all trying to put their lives back together and pull meaning from the wreckage through theater, photography, and the retelling of folklore. I identify as nonbinary and bi+: I’m currently working on my next novel, which reimagines the Greek myths of Icarus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur as a queer love triangle that ends up bringing about the downfall of the Minoan empire.
I’m looking forward to more learning and conversations at Netivot!
Dena Belinkoff
Hello – I’ve been asked to contribute to the “new member” column for the rebooted newsletter. To clarify – I consider myself squarely in the new-ish member category, since I joined Netivot in July of 2025 and find myself serving on a committee. More importantly, I don’t feel new because I’ve been thoroughly and warmly welcomed by the community, I’ve reconnected with some old friends and, not surprisingly, I’ve found that the degree of separation with many others is far less than 6. This is in part because I’m not new to the East Bay and its many and varied Jewish institutions and organizations. I’ve lived here for all of my adult life, with the exception of a 13 year sojourn in Maryland. I am one of those people who came to Berkeley for college and saw no reason to ever leave (except for the sojourn).
I retired in 2021 from a long and never boring career as a health plan business and regulatory lawyer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Hospitals. Since the demands on my time came to a screeching halt nearly 5 years ago, I’ve been trying out different ways to find purpose, while protecting that new-found freedom. One thread has been reconnecting with the Jewish community in the aftermath of October 7. International travel has been high on my list, including trips to Egypt & Jordan, Sicily, Vietnam & Cambodia, Peru & Ecuador (2025 seder at Chabad in Cuzco!), and with a trip to Morocco coming up. My biggest commitment is to voter protection activism, year round, through a volunteer group that is deeply involved in interesting and innovative work in battleground states. Happy to talk to anyone who will listen.
I’m originally from Chicago and grew up in Claremont, CA. My Jewish identity is long on the connection to Israel, and relatively short on observance. My parents made aliya in ‘49, came back after 4 years, and I spent my entire childhood involved in Habonim, including a year in Israel on Habonim Workshop in ‘73-74. I have two adult sons who by a quirk of fate both teach at Wash U in St Louis. I am frequently there visiting them and my two grandchildren, pondering how we’re going to flip Missouri blue.
Longer-Term Members:
David Mostardi
I was born here in the Bay Area and grew up in Fremont. I arrived in Berkeley in 1976 to attend Cal and never left. I became a Jew-by-choice in 1983, and began attending Netivot Shalom in 1989 when it was just six months old and still called the Berkeley Conservative Congregation. Amongst my teachers were Jan Fisher z”l, who taught me trope, and Sandy Schneider z”l, whose leining made the texts come alive and whose approach I have tried to emulate ever since. My wife Arlene Baxter and I will celebrate our 36th anniversary in June.
When people ask what I did for a living, I usually say “computer stuff.” It’s quicker than ticking off the varied jobs I held over the years, including systems administrator and sales engineer. I particularly enjoyed teaching adults, which was an asset whenever I needed to explain my company’s technology. I retired on Leap Year Day 2024 and haven’t missed work yet. In theory, retirement gives me time to pursue my long list of side interests.
My big project for the past year has been writing a book on the early 20th-century San Francisco bookseller and publisher Paul Elder. Arlene and I are great lovers of the American Arts & Crafts Movement, and most of Elder’s books were designed and decorated with an Arts & Crafts aesthetic. I began collecting the books, and things snowballed from there. I’ve been researching Elder for 30+ years and maintain a website about him (paulelder.org). My book will be published in May by the Book Club of California.
I’m also the historian for the Berkeley Hillside Club, founded in 1898 the Northside neighborhood. The Club was largely responsible for the winding streets in the Berkeley hills (as opposed to the rectilinear street grid laid down in San Francisco, heedless of whatever hills were in the way) and the spread of Arts & Crafts residential architecture, particularly the prototypic Berkeley brown-shingle. I write a monthly column for the Club newsletter and give periodic talks about the Club’s history.
In college, my main social activity was folkdancing, both Israeli (Hillel on Tuesdays, Ashkenaz on Sundays) and international (Hearst Gym on Fridays). That grew into performing live music for folkdancing, at first on various guitar-like instruments and hammered dulcimer, and later on accordion. Nowadays, accordion is my main instrument, and primarily for Scottish Country Dancing. For 32 years I was in a band called Fiddlesticks & Ivory, and you can find me most years performing at the annual Scottish Games in Pleasanton on Labor Day weekend.
My college degree is in zoology, and I still like to be outdoors as much as possible. I’m a pretty serious birder these days, and I lead field trips for the Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formerly Golden Gate Audubon), primarily at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park. I bring my binoculars almost everywhere I go (well, not to shul on Shabbat), and have my eye on birding many new spots around the world, now that retirement has opened up time for more travel.
Mary Breiner
Netivot Shalom’s membership reflects the uniquely accepting environment that is Berkeley and that is why I feel so at home here. We joined in 1993.
I was born on a US Marine base shortly after my parents returned from Israel where they were serving as support staff at the US embassy. Through my mother I felt an early attachment to Israel and Jewish history. In college, I converted to Judaism. My family moved frequently, but we always returned to the Bay Area where my mother’s family had settled during the Gold Rush. Regretfully, they did not make jeans. I followed my grandfather and an aunt by going Cal. Go Bears! Later I went to nursing school at Emory University in Atlanta. Later still I married Tommy, who I had met at Cal in a student coop, and we bought a funky Berkeley house and had two amazing kids. Both of us worked for UC for 30 years and neither of us can imagine living anywhere else. For better or worse we are boomers to the core.
So here are some basic “Mary Facts”:
Favorite Place: Home.
Most Meaningful Work: Being a Mom, Wife, and Nurse.
Most Beloved Line of Torah: “Because you were strangers in Egypt.” Empathy is at my core.
Beloved Lines of Psalms: “One thing I ask of Adonai – This is what I seek: to dwell in the House of God all the days of my life, to behold God’s peacefulness and to pray in God’s sanctuary.” and “Tears may linger for a night; Joy comes with the dawn.”
Best advice I have ever been given: Go for kindness; it lasts.
Favorite musician: Bruce Springsteen. How many live shows have I seen? 20 -25. How far have I traveled to see Bruce? 350 + miles. How many days in a row have I gone to his concerts? 3. If you were at Winterland, December 1978, let’s talk!
Current favorite author: Ann Patchett. (sooo boomer!)
Favorite Art: 17th century Portraiture and Still Life: Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish. Favorite cities are ones in which you are most likely to see this art: New York and Amsterdam
Enduring Adventures: Retirement, Political Activism, Hiking Locally (check out All Trails app!), Studying Hebrew, and Hoping for Grandchildren.
Karen and Steve Bovarnick
Karen and Steve both grew up in large synagogues–Karen in the San Fernando Valley and Steve outside Seattle on Mercer Island. They met in Berkeley, at a friend’s Shabbat dinner, two years after Steve became an attorney, Karen having just finished at Cal and debating whether to start law school that year or take more time off. After Karen’s first year of law school, Karen and Steve married in LA, the day of the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics. When Karen graduated law school, she gave Steve a Doctorate of Jurispatience. In 1990, they joined CNS, drawn to CNS’s energy and participatory ethos—”It felt like we were building something because as soon as we joined, we were asked to volunteer. We appreciated that CNS was not just a place for kids, but for adult community too.”
Karen and Steve have two children, Ben and Eli, now 35 and 32, who attended Oakland Hebrew Day School for elementary school and Midrasha during high school. Karen recently retired from the California Attorney General’s office where she practiced complex civil litigation (including the landmark case against Big Tobacco) and criminal law, primarily before appellate courts. She is a longtime volunteer with Project AVARY, a program that supports children of incarcerated parents, and does pro bono work on immigration for JCFS-East Bay. Karen currently is in her second stint serving on the Board, has chaired and been part of several committees, and was recently seen in the Shpiel. Steve is a partner at a San Francisco law firm where he focuses on civil litigation and business-related transactional work. Behind the scenes, in addition to serving on the Board and Committees, Steve volunteers his experience to advise on operational needs of the congregation. He is particularly proud of having authored a joint use agreement with Berkeley Montessori that allows CNS to use the side courtyard off the social hall on Shabbat and holidays.
Karen and Steve enjoy traveling and their newest joy is their granddaughter, Emmy!