Beth El Temple of West Hartford has announced the addition of three new faculty members to its religious school.

Adrian Durlester of Southington joins Beth El’s religious school as a second grade teacher. Durlester, who relocated from Deerfield, Ill. to the Hartford area last month, also serves as the Musician-In-Residence at Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Hartford. Among his previous appointments, he served as a music teacher for the Lower School of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan. He also works as a consultant to Jewish educators on implementing and using technology. A native of New York City, Durlester holds a BFA from the School of Design & Production of the North Carolina School of the Arts and a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt University Divinity School. An accomplished musician and pianist, he studied at both The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music.

Eliane Freund of West Hartford joins the religious school as a fourth and fifth grade teacher. A Beth El Board member, Freund has served as co-chair of the Beth El Music and Arts program (BEMA) for the past four years. She taught for eight years at United Synagogue Religious School of West Hartford, and has served as co-chair of the Jewish Book Festival at the Mandell Jewish Community Center of Greater Hartford and as director of the 25th Anniversary Gala of the University of Hartford, Maurice Greenberg Center of Judaic Studies. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she was educated in Brazil in Yiddishist schools and later in the United States in St. Louis Jewish day schools. She holds a Bachelors degree in Spanish Literature from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Susan Fried of West Hartford joins the religious school as a fourth and fifth grade teacher. An experienced Judaic educator, Fried has teaching experience in both special needs and typical classroom settings. After attending Beis Rivka Seminary, she taught at the Beis Rivka elementary school in Brooklyn, N.Y.  She also worked as an educational grant manager, senior librarian, and Judaic program director at the Jewish Association for Community Living (JCL). Fried was raised in a Chabad family in Northern California and attended high school at a yeshiva in Pennsylvania. She attended a university in California and holds a Bachelors degree in speech pathology and a Masters in industrial organizational psychology.