Jody Hirsh is the J’s Judaic Education Director and is the winner of the 2005 Covenant Award for Outstanding Jewish Educator. For three years he served as Program Director of the Hong Kong Jewish Community Center. He has taught Jewish Studies at the University of California (both the Berkeley and Los Angeles Campuses), Mills College, and the University of San Francisco as well as the Los Angeles University of Judaism and Hebrew Union College. In the fall of 1990 through the winter of 1992, he was a Jerusalem Fellow, concentrating on Museum Education at the Israel Museum, the Citadel Museum with post graduate work at the Hebrew University.

In addition to his claim to fame as the world’s only speaker of “Judaeo Cantonese,” he is an OBIE award winning playwright who has had productions of his plays all over the world. His plays include the award winning “Seeing Double” written with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, “The Great King Herod Murder Mystery,” Israel’s longest running play, “The Long Seder, “ first produced in Houston, Texas, in 1996, and “The Case for Matthew Nathan,” performed in Hong Kong as part of the Handover festivities in June 1997. He was the lead writer for the award winning JCC cookbook and holiday guide, Tastes of Jewish Tradition.