Executive Director:

Netanel Miles-Yepez

IN 2005, we hired our first Executive Director, Netanel Miles-Yepez, who has been with the Reb Zalman Legacy Project from its beginnings in 2002.

Netanel is a native of Battle Creek, Michigan, and is descended from a Sefardi family of crypto-Jews (anusim, "forced" converts) tracing their ancestry from Mexico all the way back to medieval Portugal and Spain.

Netanel studied History of Religions and Comparative Religion at Michigan State University, focusing on Hindu and Jewish Philosophy, Hindu Tantra, and Islamic Textual Traditions. Later, unsatisfied with academics alone, he moved to Boulder, Colorado to study Jewish spirituality and Hasidism under Reb Zalman's personal guidance. At that time, he also enrolled in the Buddhist Studies M.A. program at Naropa University, studying Buddhist Tantra and Philosophy. Today, he is an ordained murshid ("guide") of the Sufi-Hasidic, Inayati-Maimuniyya Order and co-founder of The Desert Fellowship of the Message with Reb Zalman.

Before becoming Director the Reb Zalman Legacy Project, Netanel was the Editor of Print and Web-Site Publishing for the Spiritual Paths Foundation which sponsors inter-faith dialogues around the country. He is also a professional writer and editor of books on ecumenical spirituality, including The Way of Contemplation and Meditation (Spiritual Paths Publishing, 2002), Reb Zalman's Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings and Tales of the Hasidic Masters (Jossey-Bass, 2003), and The Common Heart: An Experience of Interreligious Dialogue (Lantern Press, 2006). He is also the co-author of the forthcoming A Heart Afire: Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters (Jewish Publication Society, 2009).

In 2002, when Reb Zalman decided to donate his personal archive to Naropa University, he asked that Netanel be hired as its first archivist. Soon after, the Yesod Foundation hired him to begin the work of sifting through the material of the collection. Later, as the partnership between the Yesod Foundation and Naropa University came together in the Reb Zalman Legacy Project, Netanel became its official Archivist and Content Development Specialist. In 2004, Netanel presented on archive development to the international Advisory Council of the Reb Zalman Legacy Project, on which he also served as an advisor in content development, ecumenism, and hasidism. As the Executive Director of the Reb Zalman Legacy Project, Netanel reports directly to an Executive Board, is in charge of all project planning, and personally manages all project activities and staff.