Needham Community Education

Marilyn Lipton Okonow is the immediate past president of the Board of Directors of the Vilna Shul/Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture and Development Chair. She is also the co-founder of the Vilna Shul Genealogical Project; she has been instrumental in locating over 500 living descendants of the original Vilna Shul founders from the early 1900’s in the West End of Boston. Marilyn has 2500 family members in her family tree and loves helping others find their roots. She traveled to Poland in April 2010, visited her ancestral towns on her mother's side and found her great-grandfather's birth record from 1862. For ten years, she was the Outreach Coordinator for Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston.

In addition to her work at The Vilna, Marilyn is also in her twelfth year as the musical director for the Tremble Clefs, a chorus for Parkinson’s patients and their caregivers, part of the Charlotte and Richard Okonow Parkinson’s Support Program at Jewish Family and Children’s Service.

Elyse Winick is the Director of Arts and Culture at The Vilna Shul, with 30 years of background in experiential learning. Most recently, she served as the Director of Learning and Education at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston. She has also been the Jewish Chaplain at Brandeis University, the Director of KOACH/College Outreach and a freelance educator with M2 : The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. A graduate of Brandeis, Elyse was ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary. With an eye towards creating meaningful and accessible Jewish experiences for adults of all ages, Elyse also has a background in intergroup relations, text-based learning, community building and mentoring. At The Vilna she is focused on cultivating joy and ideas and translating the past to power the future.