The Ark Immigration Clinic
Rabbi Marisa Elana James, Director of Social Justice
rabbijames@cbst.org
Rabbi Marisa Elana James (she/her/hers) is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a long-time member of the CBST community. Before rabbinical school, Marisa was a college English teacher, competitive ballroom dancer, insurance broker, student pilot, bookstore manager, and professional Torah reader. As a teenager growing up in Connecticut, she was a co-founder of her high school’s GSA, the second to be founded in the state.
While living in Jerusalem for more than five years, Marisa worked for Encounter Programs, taught Introduction to Judaism classes in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, studied at a wide variety of schools (including Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, secular, and non-Jewish settings), and helped create and lead the rabbinical student program for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, where she most recently worked. Marisa has also taught English at the University of Connecticut and Rutgers and has acted as cantor for communities in Israel and America. Marisa and her wife, contrabassoonist and translator Barbara Ann Schmutzler, live in New York City.
Noah Habeeb, Immigration Clinic Director
nhabeeb@cbst.org
Noah Habeeb directs the Ark Immigration Clinic at CBST. Noah is also a Department of Justice Fully Accredited Representative, which allows him to represent immigrant New Yorkers before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Immigration Courts, and the Department of Homeland Security. He has an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning from UEP at Tufts University and previously worked as an Urban Fellow in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA). He is a 2024-2025 Interfaith Civic Leadership Academy Fellow at the Interfaith Center of New York.
Azeem, (he/him), our Immigration Clinic Navigator, was born into a philanthropic family in Guyana. Azeem engaged in humanitarian work from an early age. As a teen, he worked promoting HIV/AIDS awareness with a non-profit called Artist in Direct Support. Azeem fled Guyana in fear for his life but continued his HIV/AIDS work in New York at the AIDS Center of Queens County and then The Alliance for Positive Change, serving as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, substance use, and mental health challenges. Azeem began his journey with CBST checking in volunteers during our in-person clinics and then heading downstairs to work on his own asylum application – an application that was granted 20 years after his arrival in the US! He is proud to stand as a lighthouse to guide new friends to a safe shore the way he was guided when he came to CBST.”