OSM Reporting Members, who may be contacted to learn more about the AJS’s resolution procedures and the process for reporting an incident, include the AJS President, the AJS Executive Director, and the following OSM Members:
Dr. Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is lecturer in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. She is also the Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, a research institute on Jews and gender, where she directs the Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law. Her research and teaching explores feminist theory, legal theory, and women's rights at the intersection of civil and religious law. She holds law degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School and Harvard Law School. In 2018, Lisa volunteered to serve on the ad-hoc AJS Sexual Misconduct Task Force where she was instrumental in developing the AJS procedures for handling complaints of sexual misconduct. In 2019, Lisa became the secretary of the new Office on Sexual Misconduct (OSM) which oversees the design and operation of the AJS sexual misconduct policy and procedures. In 2023 she became the president of the OSM.
Dr. Laura Levitt is professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender at Temple University where she has chaired the Department of Religion and the Jewish Studies Program. She has directed Temple University’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program, is the former coordinator of the Greater Philadelphia Women’s Studies Consortium, and has written about sexual assault and traumatic memory. Laura has served on the AJS Board of Directors, and in 2018 was appointed chair of the ad-hoc AJS Sexual Misconduct Task Force. Under her leadership, the Task Force developed procedures for handling complaints of sexual misconduct in AJS sponsored programs and activities. In 2019, Laura became the chair of the new Office on Sexual Misconduct (OSM) which oversees the design and operation of the AJS sexual misconduct policy and procedures. In 2023, she became the secretary of the OSM.
Dr. Flora Cassen is associate professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies, and History at Washington University in St. Louis with research interests in the social life of Jews in Renaissance Italy, European Jewish History and Culture, Jewish identity, and Antisemitism. In 2018, Flora volunteered to serve on the ad-hoc AJS Sexual Misconduct Task Force. In 2019 she became an Ombud for the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
Dr. Marjorie Lehman is professor and department chair of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She teaches and does research on gender in rabbinic literature. Most recently she published, Bringing Down the Temple House: Engendering Tractate Yoma (Brandies University Press, 2022), which is a feminist project that explores the rabbis’ relationship to the Temple-house as it intersects with the everyday household in Bavli Yoma. In spring 2021 she taught an undergraduate course, “Sexual Citizens.” With a focus on matters of sexuality (including what the rabbis have to say about sexual assault), the goal was to explore the ways that Talmudic texts provoke needed discussions around matters of gender and sexuality.
Rabbi Dr. William Plevan writes on modern Jewish thought, theology, and ethics and teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Gratz College, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He currently serves on the board of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and has served as president of Matan, an organization devoted to promoting special needs Jewish education.
Dr. Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg is a faculty member at the Hadar Institute. Micha'el previously served as associate professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew College and as rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center in Washington Heights. He is the author of Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2018), and with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, he is coauthor of Gender Equality and Prayer in Jewish Law (Ktav, 2017).
Dr. Ashley Valanzola is assistant professor of the Holocaust at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. She received her BS in History from the U.S. Naval Academy, her MA in Diplomacy from Norwich University, and her PhD in History from the George Washington University. A specialist in modern European history and Holocaust Studies, her book manuscript, Prevail: Jewish Women and the Preservation of Holocaust Memory in France, examines the role of individual women in shaping the production of Holocaust memory from 1945 to the present day. She has received grants from the Chateaubriand Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences provided through the French Embassy as well as the Washington D.C. Cosmos Club Foundation. During her time in the Navy and after, she served as a sexual assault victim advocate and an educator for sexual assault prevention initiatives.
Dr. Rabbi Mira Beth Wasserman is director of the Center for Jewish Ethics and assistant professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Connecting her academic research and social justice work, Mira draws on Rabbinic literature—the Talmud in particular—as a model for contemporary ethical deliberation. Her teaching responsibilities include training rabbis and rabbinic students in professional ethics and abuse prevention. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Respect and Responsibility: A Jewish Ethics Study Guide deploying Jewish values and text study in the prevention of abuse. In 2019 she became an Ombud for the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
In addition, the OSM includes the following Core Office Members, available to serve on formal hearing panels:
Carole Balin
Rabbi Carole B. Balin, Ph.D. is professor emerita of Jewish History at HUC-JIR/New York and chair of the board of the Jewish Women’s Archive. She is currently at work on a narrative non-fiction about shifting
Jewish identities, as told through the stories of bat mitzvah girls over the past century. Balin is a New York state-certified Sexual Assault-Domestic Violence Advocate and volunteers for the Crime Victim Treatment Center at Mt. Sinai Hospital in
Manhattan. In 2019 she became a Core Member of the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
Aryeh Cohen
Dr. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen is professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University. His academic work focuses on the intersection of Talmudic discussions and contemporary issues of justice. He is Rabbi in Residence at Bend the Arc:
Jewish Action in Southern California and serves on the board of Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice. In 2019 he became a Core Member of the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi
Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi is Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her book (forthcoming from Indiana University Press in March 2023) examines the moral and textual implications of treating sex as one species of social interaction among many, and uses sex as a way to think of risk as a moral category. In her copious free time, she enjoys cooking unnecessarily complicated meals and sharpening her overly large collection of kitchen knives.
Ari Kelman
Dr. Ari Kelman is Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Ari’s research focuses on the ways that people learn religion across domains including schools,
congregations, museums, camps, media, and online, and on contemporary Jewish identity and culture. He has served on the AJS Board and in 2018 he volunteered to serve on the ad-hoc AJS Sexual Misconduct Task Force. In 2019 he became a Core Member of
the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
Jessica Lang
Dr. Jessica Lang is dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of English and Jewish Studies, and the William Newman Director of the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center at Baruch College, CUNY. Her areas of expertise include Jewish American Literature, Holocaust Literature, the literature of leave-takers (also known as OTD or Off the Derech), and immigrant literature. In 2022 she became a Core Member of the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
Barbara Mann
Dr. Barbara Mann is professor of Cultural Studies and Hebrew Literature and the Chana Kekst Professor of Jewish Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Her areas of expertise include Israeli and Jewish literature,
cultural studies, modern poetry, critical theory and urban studies, literary modernism, and the fine arts. In 2019 she became a Core Member of the AJS Office on Sexual Misconduct.
