Meet the New JPS President

Gittel Hilibrand, Esq.

JPS is pleased to announce the election of Gittel Hilibrand, Esq. as its next president, succeeding David Lerman, who led the organization with great distinction since 2007. Ms. Hilibrand joined the JPS board in 2005, and in 2006 she became its treasurer and then a vice president.

Gittel Hilibrand immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union at the age of five. Her childhood was filled with stories of how her family repeatedly risked their lives, and many lost their lives, in order to remain observant Jews and study Torah. Ms. Hilibrand grew up in Houston and attended Jewish day school. She graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. At Yale, she was president of the Kosher Kitchen, co-chair of Hillel, and chair of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Ms. Hilibrand then graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was an associate editor for the International Law Journal and taught law at a local school. She then clerked on the United States District Court and the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, and then became a litigator. Ms. Hilibrand has served on the boards of several Jewish day schools, the Jewish Community Center, and the Jewish Law Day Committee.

She is grateful to David Smith, JPS Board Chair, who encouraged her to become involved with JPS. Ms. Hilibrand attributes her passion about Jewish books to her roots in the former Soviet Union, where Jewish scholarship was silenced. "The freedom to speak in the United States is also an obligation for us to speak," says Ms. Hilibrand. She is an ardent believer that this obligation includes supporting the publication of great Jewish books; that it is our responsibility to enable Jewish voices, Jewish scholarship and Jewish thoughts to flourish.

Ms. Hilibrand lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their two children.