Adventures in Jewish Studies

Alexandra Mandelbaum

Alexandra Mandelbaum is a fellow in the Maskilot program at the David Hartman Center for Intellectual Leadership. She is writing her doctoral thesis in the Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University and her research focuses on Breslov Hasidism and the ideological fluctuations within Jewish society. Over the years, she has been involved in leading and coordinating projects in the field of Jewish and Israeli culture. As part of the “Cultural Brigade” she wrote, produced, and created two plays that dealt with Russian-Israeli identity.

Christopher Silver

Christopher Silver is the Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University. He earned his PhD in History from UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles on North African history and music, including in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and Hespéris-Tamuda. He is also the founder and curator of the website Gharamophone.com, a digital archive of North African records from the first half of the twentieth century. His first book Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music across Twentieth-Century North Africa was published in June 2022 with Stanford University Press.

Adane Zawdu-Gebyanesh

Adane Zawdu-Gebyanesh, PhD, is a cultural sociologist who focuses on how categories of difference structure our social and political experience, with a particular interest in ethnic and racial categorization. He was the 2020-2021 Jonathan Shapiro postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and is currently a Polonsky Fellow at the Polonsky Academy for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, based at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Hartley Lachter

Hartley Lachter is Associate Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University, where he directs the Berman Center for Jewish Studies. His scholarship focuses on medieval Kabbalah, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between Jewish historical experiences and the development of kabbalistic discourses. He is the author of Kabbalistic Revolution: Reimagining Judaism in Medieval Spain.

Clémence Boulouque

Clémence Boulouque is the Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor in Jewish and Israel studies at Columbia University. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, interreligious encounters, intellectual history and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and the arts, and the study of the unconscious. She is the author of Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism, and serves as the co-editor of the Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism series.

Sara Ronis

Sara Ronis is Associate Professor of Theology at St. Mary's University, Texas. She is the author of Demons in the Talmud: Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in Late Antique Babylonia.

Marla Segol

Marla Segol is a Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo. She researches Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Modern Esotericism, religious cosmopolitanism, and the history of the body and sexuality. Her most recent book is Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy.

Michael D. Swartz

Michael D. Swartz is Professor of Hebrew and Religious Studies in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University. His research focuses on the cultural history of Judaism in late antiquity, rabbinic studies, early Jewish mysticism and magic, and ritual studies. His most recent book is The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism.

Max Strassfeld

Max Strassfeld is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. They are the author of Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature.

S.J. Crasnow

S.J. Crasnow is Associate Professor and Chair of Theology & Religious Studies at Rockhurst University. Their work focuses on religion, gender, and sexuality and often specifically explores the lived experiences of queer and trans Jews.

Laura S. Lieber

Laura S. Lieber is Professor of Religious Studies and Classics at Duke University, where she directs the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for Late Ancient Studies. Her primary area of research is in the area of synagogue poetry ("piyyut") from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period.

Judah Cohen

Judah Cohen is Professor of Music in Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture at the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and director of the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research interests include music in Jewish life, American music, musical theater, popular culture, Caribbean Jewish history, diaspora, and medical ethnomusicology.

Julia Watts Belser

Julia Watts Belser (she/her) is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University, core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Her research centers on disability, gender, and ecology in Talmud and rabbinic literature, as well as queer feminist disability ethics. She is the author of two scholarly books, Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster and Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem. She has held faculty fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and she has rabbinic ordination from the Academy of Jewish Religion CA. A longtime advocate for disability and gender justice, she currently directs an initiative on Disability and Climate Change at Georgetown University — and she’s a passionate wheelchair hiker.

Photo: Julia Watts Belser, a white Jewish woman with curly brown hair, sits happily in her wheelchair in front of a pink flowering bush. She is wearing a patterned red blazer and red kippah (beret) to match.)

nili Broyer

nili Broyer is an academic director at the Center for Disabilities Studies, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her PhD in Disability Studies is from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where she was a recipient of the Ethel Louise Armstrong (ELA) Scholarship Award. Her main research interests include critical disability studies, cultural studies, disability art and culture, performance studies, feminist theory, autoethnography, and stigma.

Photo: ©Yoel Levy

Roger Horowitz

Roger Horowitz is Director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Library and Professor of History at the University of Delaware. His book Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food received the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies, the Dorothy Rosenberg award on the Jewish Diaspora from the American Historical Association and was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine. His earlier books include Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation and "Negro and White, Unite and Fight!" A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-1990. Horowitz also is active in professional organizations, currently serving as Treasurer of the Business History Conference, a trustee of the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware, and a member of the Scholarly Council of the American Jewish Historical Association. His current research focuses on the impact of Jewish preference for chicken on American foodways and the nation’s political economy.

David Zvi Kalman

David Zvi Kalman is Scholar in Residence and Director of New Media at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where he co-leads the research group on Judaism and the Natural World. He is the owner and operator of Print-O-Craft Press as well as KLMNOPS, a Jewish art house. Forthcoming publications include the Judaism chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence, as well as a chapter on Halakhah and Technology in the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Law. His current book project, based on his dissertation, is a history of the Jewish reception of timekeeping technology from the Bible to the 21st century.

Jordan D. Rosenblum

Jordan D. Rosenblum is the Belzer Professor of Classical Judaism, the Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Chair of the Department of Art History. In 2009, he was a Starr Fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on the literature, law, and social history of the rabbinic movement in general and, in particular, on rabbinic food regulations. He is the author of Rabbinic Drinking: What Beverages Teach Us About Rabbinic Literature; The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World; and Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism, as well as the co-editor of Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food; Animals and the Law in Antiquity; With the Loyal You Show Yourself Loyal: Essays on Relationships in the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Saul M. Olyan; and Religious Competition in the Third Century C.E.: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World . Currently, he is working on a new book, provisionally entitled Jews and The Pig: A History, which will explore the long association between Jews and the pig, including visual representations (e.g., the Judensau).

Laura Jockusch

Laura Jockusch is the Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University, where her research and teaching focus on the social, political, cultural, and legal histories of European Jews before, during, and after the Holocaust. Her ongoing research project investigates how Jews conceptualized revenge and justice after the Holocaust. She is the co-editor of Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust (with Gabriel Finder). She is currently working on a book entitled The Trials of Stella Goldschlag: Nazi Victim, Holocaust Survivor, and War Criminal?

Dan Porat

Dan Porat is Unterberg Chair in Jewish Social and Educational History at the Hebrew University. His book, Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators (Harvard University Press/Belknap), was a 2019 Jewish Book Award finalist.

Adrienne Krone, PhD

Adrienne Krone is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegheny College. She has a Ph.D. in American Religion from Duke University. Her research focuses on food and farming practices in contemporary American religions. Her current project is an ethnographic and historical study of the Jewish community farming movement in North America.

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, PhD

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Ph.D. Hebrew University 1978) is Regents Professor of History, Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, and Director of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University. An intellectual historian, she writes on Jewish philosophy and mysticism, religion, science, and technology, and religion and ecology. She is the editor of Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (2002) and the author of Religion and Environment: The Case of Judaism (2020) in addition to numerous essays on Judaism in reference books and anthologies devoted to religion and ecology.

Uri Dorchin

Uri Dorchin is a cultural anthropologist who has held visiting positions at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Colorado, and the University of California, Los Angeles. His research and teaching focus on the socio-cultural aspects of popular culture and music, ethnicity, and racial thinking, with recent research focused on Israeli rap and hip hop music. He is the author of the book Real Time: Hip-Hop in Israel/ Israeli Hip Hop and co-editor of Blackness in Israel: Rethinking Racial Boundaries.

Daniel Stein Kokin

Daniel Stein Kokin is a Visiting Scholar at Arizona State University and has previously taught Jewish and Israel Studies at Yale, UCLA, the University of Oregon, and the University of Greifswald (Germany). He writes on Renaissance Humanism, Jewish-Christian relations, and modern Israel, and also develops academic presentations that synthesize scholarly lecture and dramatic performance, including the“Breach of Protocols: Revisiting Zion’s Elders” project.

Keren R. McGinity, PhD

Keren R. McGinity teaches in the Brandeis University American Studies Program, is a Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and is the Interfaith Specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. She was the inaugural director of the Interfaith Families Jewish Engagement graduate program at Hebrew College. Dr. McGinity is the author of Still Jewish: A History of Women & Intermarriage in America, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and Marrying Out: Jewish Men, Intermarriage, and Fatherhood, as well as many scholarly and popular articles.

Carole Balin, PhD

As a prolific writer and teacher, Rabbi Carole B. Balin, Ph.D. is known for her fresh ideas, authenticity, and way with words. She is the first woman to earn tenure at the NY campus of her alma mater, Hebrew Union College, where she is professor emerita of history. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College, she earned a doctorate at Columbia University. Carole Balin is the Chair of the Jewish Women’s Archive board and speaks and publishes widely on gender and the Jewish experience. She co-curated the National Museum of American Jewish History’s exhibit, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age. She is currently writing a narrative non-fiction about shifting American Jewish identity as told through the stories of bat mitzvah girls since the first in the United States in 1922. To contribute your bat mitzvah story, click here.

Melissa R. Klapper, PhD

Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and Director of Women's & Gender Studies at Rowan University. She is the author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU, 2005); Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1925 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007); and Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890-1940 (NYU, 2013), which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies. Her most recent book is Ballet Class: An American History (Oxford, 2020).

Deborah Waxman, PhD

The first woman rabbi to head a Jewish congregational union and a Jewish seminary, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., became president of Reconstructing Judaism in 2014. Since then, she has drawn on her training as a rabbi and historian to be the Reconstructionist movement’s leading voice in the public square. Website

theatre dybbuk creates provocative new works that blend physical theatre with dance, poetry, and music for exciting, utterly singular live experiences. The company explores the rich world of Jewish folklore, rituals, and history, building lyrical performances that illuminate universal human experience for contemporary audiences. Through a combination of performed readings and interviews with artists and scholars, their podcast series, The Dybbukast, brings creative texts and their historical contexts to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. www.theatredybbuk.org

Pamela Nadell

Professor Pamela Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University where she directs the Jewish Studies Program and received the university’s highest award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year. Her books include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985. A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and the recipient of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Lee Max Friedman Award for distinguished service, her consulting work for museums includes the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Library of Congress. She is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Her recent book, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019) won the National Jewish Book Award – Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year.

Lisa Leff

Lisa Leff is a professor at American University and a historian of European and Jewish history, specializing in the history of Jews in France. She is the author of Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth Century France, Colonialism and the Jews, and The Archive Thief: the Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust, which received the 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature. She was named American University's 2017 Scholar-Teacher of the Year.

Lior Sternfeld

Lior Sternfeld, PhD, is an assistant professor of history and Jewish Studies at Penn State University. His is a social historian of the modern Middle East with particular interests in the histories of the Jewish people and other minorities of the region. His first book, titled Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2018), examines, against the backdrop of Iranian nationalism, Zionism and constitutionalism, the development and integration of Jewish communities in Iran into the nation-building projects of the last century. He is currently working on two book projects: "The Origins of Third Worldism in the Middle East" and a new study of the Iranian-Jewish Diaspora in the U.S. and Israel. He teaches on the modern Middle East, Iran, Jewish histories of the region, and Israel-Palestine related classes.

Galeet Dardashti

As both anthropologist and performer/composer Dr. Galeet Dardashti, PhD, has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer, educator and advocate of Middle Eastern Jewish culture. As a scholar, her publications examine Israeli music/media, Mizrahi cultural politics, and the political economy of philanthropy; she is currently completing a book on the Mizrahi piyyut (sacred song) phenomenon in Israel. Dardashti has held postdoctoral fellowships at NYU and Rutgers and most recently was Assistant Professor of Jewish Music/Musician in Residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her research as Affiliated Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center in 2020/21 examines a nascent movement of young liberal “Mizrahi” North American Jews. As a performer/composer, Dardashti is widely known as leader/founder of the all-woman Middle Eastern ensemble Divahn, and through her multi-disciplinary commissions The Naming and Monajat; she will be recording Monajat as the Artist-in-Virtual-Residence at Indiana University’s Jewish Studies Program in spring 2021.

Tanhum Yoreh

Tanhum Yoreh, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on religion and environment, faith-based environmentalism, Jewish environmentalism, faith-based environmental ethics, and religious legal approaches to environmental protection. He is particularly interested in the themes of wastefulness, consumption, and simplicity. Dr. Yoreh is currently researching environmental engagement in faith communities in Canada, the United States, and Israel. He is the author of Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic. Website

Kenneth Wald

Kenneth Wald, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. He has written about the relationship of religion and politics in the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. His most recent books include The Politics of Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period (co-authored) and Religion and Politics in the United States (4th ed.). His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Social Science Quarterly, and many other journals.

Beth S. Wenger

Beth S. Wenger, PhD, is Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania where she serves as Chair of the History Department. A specialist in American Jewish history, Wenger's interests also include European Jewish culture, American religion and ethnicity, and cultural, social and gender history. Wenger’s most recent book is a co-edited anthology titled Gender in Judaism and Islam: Common Lives, Uncommon Heritage. She is also the author of History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage, New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise, and The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America. Wenger has published numerous scholarly articles, including contributions to the journals American Jewish History, Jewish Social Studies, the Journal of Women's History, as well as several essays in collected volumes and anthologies.

Marc Dollinger

Marc Dollinger, PhD, holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. Professor Dollinger is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s. He has published entries in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia of Antisemitism, and the Encyclopedia of African American Education. His next project traces his own experience fighting campus antisemitism at both right-wing and left-wing universities. Professor Dollinger has spoken about his research on Don Lemon’s CNN-podcast Silence Is Not an Option, as well as the NFL Network and ESPN. Just for fun, Dr. Dollinger helped actress Helen Hunt learn about her Jewish roots on the prime-time NBC show Who Do You Think You Are?.

Lewis R. Gordon

Lewis R. Gordon, PhD, is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician and Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at UCONN-Storrs, where he also has affiliations in Judaic Studies, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global Studies. He is the author of sixteen influential and award-winning monographs and anthologies. His forthcoming books are Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization, 论哲学、去殖民化与种族 (“On Philosophy, Decolonization, and Race”), trans. Li Beilei, and Fear of Black Consciousness. He co-edits the book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought and the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs. He is Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and a former president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, for which he now serves as its chairperson of awards and global collaborations.

Sandra Fox

Sandra Fox is a historian of American Jewry, youth, and Yiddish culture. A Jim Joseph Postdoctoral Fellow in education and religion at Stanford University, her book-in-progress research considers the lived experience and intergenerational tension in postwar American Jewish summer camps. She is also the founder and executive producer of Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast in Yiddish, and serves as a peer review editor at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.

Nicole Samuel

Nicole Samuel is Associate Research Scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. She is the co-author of a variety of publications, including Advancing Jewish Retreating and Innovating JCCs. Her work focuses on Jewish institutions and their role in supporting Jewish life and community. She has conducted several studies of Jewish life and Israel education at overnight camp with her colleague Amy L. Sales, including Limud by the Lake Revisited: Growth and Change at Jewish Summer Camp. Currently, she is the lead investigator on the evaluation of Hillel International’s Springboard Fellowship. She received her MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women's Studies from Brandeis University, concentrating in Contemporary Jewish Life, and earned a BA in History magna cum laude from American University in Washington, DC.

Christine Hayes

Christine Hayes, PhD, is the Robert F. and Patricia R. Weis Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University, and the immediate past president of the AJS. Her published works include several books and many articles in Vetus Testamentum, The Journal for the Study of Judaism, The Harvard Theological Review, and various scholarly anthologies. Her most recent book, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives, received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship, a 2016 PROSE award for best book in Theology and Religious Studies from the American Publishers Association, and the 2016 Jordan Schnitzer Award.

Ronnie Perelis

Ronnie Perelis, PhD, is the Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Abraham and Jelena (Rachel) Alcalay Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies of Yeshiva University. His research explores connections between Iberian and Jewish culture during the medieval and early modern periods. His essays on Sephardic history investigate the dynamics of religious transformation within the context of the crypto-Jewish experience. His most recent book, Blood and Faith, explores family and identity in the Sephardic Atlantic world.

Ruth Langer

Ruth Langer is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Boston College and Associate Director of its Center for Christian-Jewish Learning. She received her PhD. in Jewish Liturgy in 1994 and her rabbinic ordination in 1986 from Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. She writes and speaks in two major areas: the development of Jewish liturgy and ritual and Christian-Jewish relations. Her books include, Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim (2012), To Worship God Properly: Tensions between Liturgical Custom and Halakhah in Judaism (2005), and Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Research (2015). She also co-edited Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue (2005) and has published a long list of articles.

Vanessa Ochs

Rabbi Vanessa Ochs, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and a core member of the Jewish Studies Program since its inception. In her research, she investigates new Jewish ritual, Jewish feminism, the Passover Haggadah, Jewish material culture, and Jewish Sensibilities. Her books include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (2020), Inventing Jewish Ritual (winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award), Sarah Laughed, The Jewish Dream Book (with Elizabeth Ochs), Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred, and Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child In An Unpredictable World.

Sarah Bunin Benor

Sarah Bunin Benor, PhD, is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. Her recent books include Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020). She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and creator of the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. Her current projects analyze Hebrew use at Jewish supplementary schools and the names American Jews give their children and their pets.

Alanna Cooper

Alanna Cooper, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist. She serves as the Abba Hillel Silver Chair in Jewish Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Her first book Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism was published with Indiana University Press in 2013. Her current book project, Preserving and Disposing of the Sacred: America’s Jewish Congregations, examines the ways communities acquire, use, maintain and deaccession their material possessions.

Vitaly Shalem

A graduate of Tel Aviv University, VItaly Shalem is a computational linguist and NLP specialist currently serving as a Principal Language Engineer at Cerence, Inc. in Belgium. Born in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia, Vitaly is native to the Judeo-Tat (Juhuri) speaking community and identifies himself as a semi-speaker of the language. In his free time, he is an independent scholar and expert on Judeo-Tat.

Grace Kessler Overbeke

Grace Kessler Overbeke is Perilman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University. She works at the intersection of Jewish Studies and Theatre Studies. Dr. Overbeke received her MA and PhD from Northwestern University's Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama program, and her BA in Theatre and English from Wesleyan University. She has published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Studies in American Humor, the New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and The Jewish Forward. In addition to being a scholar of theatre, she is also a practicing dramaturg and director. After her year of postdoctoral work at Duke, Dr. Overbeke will join the faculty at Columbia College Chicago.

Riv-Ellen Prell

Riv-Ellen Prell is Professor Emerita of American Studies at the University of Minnesota . Among her publications are Gender, Class and Jewishness: New Approaches to the Study of Identity (2011), Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation and Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism. Her edited volumes include Women Remaking American Judaism and Interpreting Women’s Lives: Personal Narratives and Feminist Theory. Dr. Prell received a BA from the University of Southern California and a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

Judy Gold

Judy Gold is a comedian who has had stand-up specials on HBO, Comedy Central and LOGO. She has written and starred in two critically acclaimed, Off-Broadway shows: The Judy Show – My Life as a Sitcom and 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother. TV appearances include guest-starring roles on Broad City, Louie, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Inside Amy Schumer, Difficult People, 30 Rock, and 2 Broke Girls. She is also the host of the hit podcast, Kill Me Now, on iTunes, and has a new comedy album by the same name. You can find her at JudyGold.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram – @jewdygold.

David Berger, PhD

David Berger, PhD, was President of the Association for Jewish Studies from 1998 to 2000, and is the Ruth and I. Lewis Gordon Professor of Jewish History and Dean at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University. His books include The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages, the co-authored Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures: Rejection or Integration?, and The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, as well as two volumes of collected essays on Jewish-Christian relations and the intellectual history of the Jews.

Laura Arnold Leibman, PhD

Laura Arnold Leibman, PhD, is Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College. Her publications include Indian Converts; Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life, which won a National Jewish Book Award, a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and was selected as one of Choice’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013; and Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826. Her research and teaching interests address material religion, Jewish Studies, and early American studies. Her latest book The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects will be available in Spring 2020.

Kenneth Seeskin, PhD

Kenneth Seeskin, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy and Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. He received his PhD in philosophy from Yale University in 1972 and has been at Northwestern ever since. He specializes in the rationalist tradition in Jewish philosophy with an emphasis on Maimonides. Publications include Maimonides on the Origin of the World, Jewish Messianic Thoughts in an Age of Despair, and Thinking about the Torah: A Philosopher Reads the Bible.

Lila Corwin Berman, PhD

Lila Corwin Berman, PhD, is Professor of History at Temple University, where she holds the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History and directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. She is completing a book called The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multi-Billion Dollar Institution and is author of Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity (2009) and Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit (2015). Her articles have appeared in several publications, including the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, AJS Review, Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, Religion and American Culture, the Washington Post, and the Forward.

Eric L. Goldstein, PhD

Eric L. Goldstein, PhD, is the Judith Evans London Director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, where he is also Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies. He is the author of The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (2006); and, with Deborah R. Weiner, On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore (2018). From 2007 to 2012 he was editor of the scholarly journal American Jewish History. His current project is a history of the reading culture of Eastern European Jews in America during the era of mass migration.

Ilana Kaufman

Ilana Kaufman is the Director of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, a national project housed at the Leichtag Foundation. Previously she was the Public Affairs and Civic Engagement Director, East Bay for the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco. As a guest on NPR’s Code Switch, with pieces featured in eJewish Philanthropy and The Foundation Review, and an ELI Talk titled “Who Counts? Race and the Jewish Future” with 16,000 views, she is passionate about all things at the intersection of Jewish community/racial justice/Jews of color/education/philanthropy. She is a Senior Schusterman Fellow who received her BA in sociology from California State University-Humboldt, and her MA in educational pedagogy from Mills College.

Judith Rosenbaum

Judith Rosenbaum, PhD, is Executive Director of the Jewish Women’s Archive, a national organization that documents Jewish women’s stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change. A writer, educator, and historian, Judith earned her doctorate in American Studies from Brown University. She teaches and lectures widely on Jewish studies and women’s studies and serves on the faculty of the Bronfman Youth Fellowships.

Warren Hoffman, PhD

Warren Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Association for Jewish Studies. Previously, he was the Associate Director of the Center of Jewish Life and Learning at Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, and he also served over five years as the Senior Director of Programming at the Gershman Y where he innovated numerous new programs and was named the "next wave" of Jewish culture by the Jewish Exponent. In the world of theater, Warren was the literary manager and dramaturg for Philadelphia Theatre Company where he researched and developed multiple world premieres by writers including Terrence McNally, Chris Durang, and Bill Irwin. In addition to working in the theater community, Hoffman holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of California-Santa Cruz. He earned rave reviews for his book The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture published by Syracuse University Press. His most recent book is The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical, which is coming out in a revised second edition in February 2020. Learn more about Warren at Warrenhoffman.com.

Brett Ashley Kaplan, PhD

Brett Ashley Kaplan earned her Ph.D. through the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley and is now the Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies and Professor in the Program in Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois. Her books, Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation (2007) and Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory (2011), examine the Shoah’s intersections with art and space. Turning to race and power in contemporary Jewish American literature, she published Jewish Anxiety in the Novels of Philip Roth (2015). She is at work on Convergences: Blackness and Jewishness in Contemporary Literature, Visual, and Performance Arts and Rare Stuff.  In addition to scholarly articles and book reviews she has written for outlets such as The Conversation, and has been interviewed on NPR and The 21st.

Josh Lambert, PhD

Josh Lambert is the Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center, and teaches American literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His most recent book is Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture (2014), and his reviews and essays have been published by the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Haaretz, Tablet, and the Forward.

Vincent Calvetti-Wolf

Vincent Calvetti-Wolf is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Near and Middle Eastern Studies Program at the University of Washington. His research explores the histories and politics of social movements led by Mizrahi Jews in Israel. He is the 2018-2019 Mickey Sreebny Memorial Scholar at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and the 2018-2019 Bank of America Endowed GO-MAP Fellow at the University of Washington Graduate School. Vincent is graduate student coordinator of the Israel/Palestine Research Colloquium and a member of the Israel Studies Advisory Committee.

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, PhD

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, PhD, is an Associate Professor of communication and journalism at Suffolk University in Boston. She has a PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a master’s degree in communication and journalism from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her book, Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair was published in 2009.

Avi Shilon, PhD

Avi Shilon, PhD, is a historian who specializes in the field of Israel Studies. His dissertation focuses on The Revisionist Movement Leaders' Attitudes Toward Jewish Religion 1925-2005. His first book, Menachem Begin: A Life, was published in 2012. His second book, Ben Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness had been published in 2016. His new book, The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process will be later this year. Shilon teaches at NYU Tel Aviv Campus and at the Hebrew University. He also writes op-ed columns for Haaretz.

Bryan K. Roby, PhD

Bryan K. Roby, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. His expertise is on Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history in the modern era. His research interests include the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in Israel/Palestine; 19th and 20th century North African history; and the legacy of French colonialism on Arab and Jewish identity. His first book, The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle 1948-1966 (2015), provides an extensive history of social justice protests by Middle Eastern Jews in Israel. He is working on a second book project, Israel through a Colored Lens, that explores the how and why Mizrahim became “Black” in Israel through the shifting boundaries of racial constructs in Israel/Palestine as well as African-American intellectual contributions to Israeli sociology and theories on race and ethnicity.

Yaacov Lozowick, PhD

Yaacov Lozowick, PhD, served as Director of Israel's National Archives from 2011 to 2018. Previously to that he ran the archives at Yad Vashem for 14 years. An historian by training, he is the author of Hitler's Bureaucrats, The Nazi Security Police and the Banality of Evil, and Right to Exist, A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars. He teaches information science at Bar Ilan University, and is writing a history of Israel's settlements.

Cynthia Baker

Cynthia Baker, PhD, is a professor at Bates College in Maine where she chairs the department of Religious Studies and teaches courses in Judaism and early Christianity - several of which are cross-listed in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her first book, Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity, was published by Stanford University press in 2002. Her recent book, Jew, published in the Key Words in Jewish Studies series from Rutgers University Press, explores the category Jew from its earliest appearances in antiquity through its more recent uses in the science of genomics.

Ofri Ilany

Ofri Ilany, PhD, is a historian and a Polonsky postdoctoral fellow at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem. His book, In Search of the Hebrew People: Bible and Nation in the German Enlightenment was published recently by Indiana University Press. Dr. Ilany’s research interests include the history of Orientalism and Bible research and the history of sexuality. His column, "Under the Sun," is published at Haaretz Weekly Supplement.

Beth Alpert Nakhai

Beth Alpert Nakhai, PhD, is an associate professor in the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona. She received her MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and her MA and PhD from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on Canaanite and Israelite religion and on the lives of women in antiquity; her books include Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, and several edited and co-edited volumes. She is currently working on a book about women in the field of Near Eastern archaeology. She served on the Board of Directors of the American Schools of Oriental Research for twelve years and chairs its Initiative on the Status of Women. She is a Board officer for the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, serving as its secretary.

Steven Weitzman

Steven Weitzman, PhD, serves at the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures and Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A scholar of Jewish antiquity, recent publications include The Jews: A History, coauthored with John Efron and Matthias Lehmann (3rd edition, 2019); a biography of King Solomon published as part of the “Jewish Lives” series from Yale University Press; and The Origin of the Jews: the Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton University Press, 2017), a recipient of a National Jewish Book Award. Weitzman previously taught at Indiana University and Stanford University.

David Wolpe

David Wolpe is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple, and was named one of the 500 Most Influential People in Los Angeles in 2016 and 2017, Most Influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek, and one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by The Jerusalem Post. Rabbi Wolpe previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the American Jewish University, Hunter College, and UCLA. A columnist for Time.com, he has been published and profiled in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post’s On Faith website, The Huffington Post, and the New York Jewish Week. He has been featured on The Today Show, Face the Nation, ABC This Morning, and CBS This Morning. In addition, Rabbi Wolpe has appeared prominently in series on PBS, A&E, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel. Rabbi Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His new book is titled David, the Divided Heart. It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards, and has been optioned for a movie by Warner Bros.

Hasia Diner, PhD

Hasia Diner, PhD, is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University, with a joint appointment in the departments of history and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. She is also the Director of the Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History. Dr. Diner’s books include Lower East Side Memories: The Jewish Place in America and Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration.

Mark Russ Federman

Mark Russ Federman was the third generation of the Russ Family to own and operate Russ & Daughters, the family appetizing store. He ran the store from behind the counter for over three decades; now retired, he considers himself “herring maven emeritus.” When he is not schmoozing across the counter, Mr. Federman writes and lectures about his store, products, and family. He is the author of Russ & Daughters; Reflections and Recipes from the House that Herring Built, and his essays are included in Gastropolis: Food & New York City and Savoring Gotham. Mr. Federman’s daughter and nephew currently own and operate Russ & Daughters.

Eve Jochnowitz, PhD

Eve Jochnowitz, PhD, is a Yiddish instructor at the YIVO Institute and the Workmen’s Circle who has been teaching Yiddish language, culture, literature, foodways and dance for 25 years.  She lectures internationally on food in Jewish tradition, religion, and ritual, as well as food in Yiddish performance and popular culture. She blogs in English and Yiddish at inmolaraan.blogspot.com, and co-hosts the Yiddish cooking show Est Gezunterheyt!. She translated, annotated, and adapted for the modern kitchen The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook in 2015. She holds a PhD in Jewish culinary ethnography from the NYU Department of Performance Studies, and worked as a cook and baker for several years in New York City. Dr. Jochnowitz is the chocolate lady.

Norma Joseph, PhD

Norma Baumel Joseph, PhD, teaches in the Department of Religions and Cultures of Concordia University, Montreal. She developed and supervised the Women and Religion specialization and is an Associate of the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies. She was the founding co-director and is currently Associate Director of the Azrieli Institute for Israel Studies. She has been the chair of the national Canadian Jewish Archives since the 1990s, and has been a columnist for Canadian Jewish News for the past decade. Dr. Joseph is a specialist in women and Judaism, their historical experience and the legal texts that encompass them, as well as food, identity, and gender. She has edited a collection on gender, food and survival in Judaism for the journal Nashim, and is currently publishing a series of articles on food, identity, and gender, especially locating the ethnic eating of Iraqi Jews.