Joshua Richman, Founder and Executive Director

Joshua Richman, a Milwaukee native, founded RUACH and serves as its Executive Director.  During the twelve years since Josh moved back to Milwaukee, RUACH’s development has been shaped in part by his growth as a leader in the Jewish, artistic, and educational activities of Milwaukee’s Jewish community.  Josh was educated as a classical musician at Yale University where he was Principal Trombonist and Assistant Conductor of the Yale Symphony Orchestra.  After graduating magna cum laude from Yale College with a BA in Music, Josh studied for two years at the Machon Shlomo yeshiva in Jerusalem.  Returning to Milwaukee from Israel, he was the coordinator of the highly successful “A Season of Jewish Music in Milwaukee.”  Josh’s conception of RUACH emerged in part from this combination of concerts and educational programs throughout the Jewish community, including such locations as day schools and assisted living centers. Josh, who resides with his wife, Hillary, and their young family in the Congregation Beth Jehudah community of Milwaukee’s diverse Sherman Park neighborhood, was awarded the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s 2011 Benjamin E. Nickoll Young Leadership Award.

Karen Reiffman, Project Manager/Artist-in-Residence

Karen Reiffman received a BA in Studio Art at the University of Illinois at Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.  She has been making and teaching art in Israel and the U.S. for over 10 years and is a very enthusiastic artist-in-residence with RUACH.   As an art teacher Reiffman loves the surprise and wow factor of often having her students become her teachers.  Karen has worked with RUACH during the past year on projects with with a variety of agencies and has been praised for her creativity and collaborative, open-minded approach to her work.  Karen, whose artwork was featured in the 2011 Milwaukee Jewish Arts Festival, is serving as Project Manager and as instructor for RUACH’s 2012 Visual Arts Residencies, Project: Positive: Speech.

Sally Duback, Instructor and Artist-in-Residence

Sally Duback has been making art since childhood and teaching art since 1969.  Educated at Vassar, the University of Michigan, UWM and Vermont Studio Center, her work hangs in the Milwaukee Art Museum and in many private  collections.  Favorite media include printmaking and papermaking, particularly working with renewable resources.  To bring art to disadvantaged children, she co-founded Artists Working in Education in 1998, which  received a Wisconsin Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2001.  Sally has worked with RUACH for the past five years, both on projects with agencies participating in visual arts residencies and workshops and by assisting in the coordination of visual arts programming. Sally has helped create Project: Positive Speech, for which she is slated to serve as an artist-in-residence.

Wisconsin Conservatory of Music

Click here to learn more about the Conservatory, which partners with RUACH in providing excellent professional music instructors to students in RUACH’s private music lesson program.