Contact
Research Areas
Anthropology; Evaluation Studies; Jewish Pluralism and Identities
Education
Ph.D., Hebrew University
B.A., Hebrew University
Links
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Rahel Wasserfall
Rahel Wasserfall
Wasserfall is an anthropologist with a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who has wide experience in three different continents. She has published widely in the area of gender and is the editor of Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law (UPNE, 1999). With her move to Boston, Wasserfall shifted her interest to Jewish education and evaluation studies. She was the Special Coordinator at JCDS (Boston Jewish Community Day School) in which capacity she directed the AISNE accreditation process. She also co-authored (with Susan Sevitz) a study on Jewish pluralism in a local Day School. She has wide experience in qualitative evaluation and is the yearly evaluator of the ISSRPL. In the last ten years Wasserfall has worked in evaluation of educational programs in complex multilingual and cross cultural settings. Some of her assignments include: Director of Evaluation at The Center for the Advancement of Hebrew Teaching and Learning Inc (HATC); Senior Research Associate with Education Matters, Inc and the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at Brandeis. In September 2012, she returned to the WSRC at Brandeis to work on a book manuscript on her nine years of evaluating the ISSRPL. Her work in the world of evaluation focuses on a pragmatic approach to knowledge that continually queries: “knowledge for whom and for which purposes”. She is also a committed yoga practitioner and teacher, having completed teacher training in the Iyengar tradition.
Current Projects
My work in the world of evaluation focuses on a pragmatic approach to knowledge that will continually query knowledge for whom and for which purposes. I am writing on my nine years experience evaluating an international program driven by the idea that finding commonalities between religious people, as interfaith dialogue does, will not lead us to accept “the other” and make a space for his/her positions.
Representative Publications
Wasserfall, Rahel, editor. Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999.
Wasserfall, Rahel. “Eating Together: the Hidden Story of the ISSRPl.” In Practical Matters, May 2012.