The Rebellious Daughters of Abraham: Global Feminism across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a panel discussion to launch "Holy Rebellion"
Moderator
Dr. Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is the Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and directs the HBI Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and Law. She teaches in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department. Her research and teaching focus on gender issues at the intersection of secular and religious law, the rights of parents and children in family law disputes, and Jewish perspectives on reproductive rights. Her publications include the books Women’s Rights And Religious Law: Domestic and International Perspectives, The Polygamy Question, and Gender, Religion And Family Law: Theorizing Conflicts Between Women’s Rights And Cultural Traditions. She is on the editorial team at Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's and Gender Studies and is editor of both the HBI Series on Jewish Women and the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law for Brandeis University Press. Dr. Joffe is a co-founder of the Boston Agunah Taskforce, devoted to research, education and advocacy on behalf of women seeking divorce under Jewish family law and a member of the steering committee of Cheirut, an international coalition of agunah advocates. Trained as a lawyer, she holds law degrees from Osgoode Hall, York University, and Harvard Law School.
Panelists
The Reverend Laura Everett serves as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, focused on reconfiguring historic institutions for the inclusive, antiracist work of the 21st century. Ordained by the United Church of Christ, Everett is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and Brown University, and serves as a regular teacher for Duke Divinity School’s Foundations of Christian Leadership Program. She is the co-host of the podcast Can These Bones with Bill Lamar, from Faith & Leadership. Everett is the author of Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels, and her writing has appeared in Religion News Service, the Christian Century, WBUR, GBH, and The Boston Globe. She is a co-founder and editor of Boston Women’s Sports, a new media venture to amplify excellent, equitable, and antiracist sports coverage. A moderately competent seamstress, mender, and textile artist, Everett aims to learn with her hands what she longs for in the word: repair. She believes the work of this moment is to notice and dismantle the racism that has divided this nation and the Church.
Dr. Celene Ibrahim, an HBI Research Associate, is a scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic social and intellectual history. She is the author of the monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an. The book won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award (2021) and was a featured title for Women's History Month by the American Academy of Religion (2022). She is also the author of Islam and Monotheism. In addition to scholarship, Ibrahim specializes in spiritual care, interreligious engagement, and religious leadership in the public sphere. She is the editor of the book One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets. She currently serves on the faculty in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Groton School and is the School's Muslim Chaplain. Ibrahim earned a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic Civilizations in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and received a degree in divinity from Harvard University.
Dr. Ronit Irshai, co-author of Holy Rebellion, is Associate Professor and the head of the gender studies department at Bar Ilan University, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a member in the board of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, and a member of “Kolech” – a religious feminist forum. She published a series of articles on halakhah (Jewish Law), theology and gender, Jewish sexual ethics, Jewish religious feminism, etc. Her first book: Fertility and Jewish Law: Feminist Perspectives on Orthodox Responsa Literature was published by Brandeis University Press in 2012. The second book on abortion was published in Hebrew by Magness press, and the third book, Holy Rebellion: Religious Feminism and the Transformation of Judaism and Women's Rights in Israel, together with Dr. Tanya Zion-Waldoks, was published by Brandeis University Press in 2024.
Dr. Alexander Kaye is the Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University, where he occupies the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Chair in Israel Studies and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. He received a PhD in Jewish history from Columbia University, and a BA and MPhil in history from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Kaye's research is on Jewish intellectual history and the history of political and legal thought. His book, The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel is a history of the idea that the State of Israel should be governed by halakha. It received the Baron Prize from the AAJR, the Leon Charney Book Award from Yeshiva University, and was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award (2021). With David N. Myers, he co-edited The Faith of Fallen Jews, a collection of works by the late Prof. Yosef H. Yerushalmi. In 2024 he edited The Collected Works of Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, the translated works of Israel's first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi. In 2021, Dr. Kaye was a co-recipient of the Young Scholar Award of the Association for Israel Studies.
Dr. Tanya Zion-Waldoks, co-author of Holy Rebellion and Assistant Professor at the Seymour Fox School of Education at Hebrew University, is a gender scholar, feminist activist and mother of four. Zion-Waldoks is fascinated by the intersection of religion, gender, and politics, with a focus on education and social change. Her current research explores feminist activism and women’s political subjectivities in religious communities or traditional contexts in Israel, examined through qualitative studies with a comparative lens. In addition, she explores issues of gender equality in education and anti-racist activism in Israel. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Gender & Society, Signs, AJS Review. Dr. Zion-Waldoks received her PhD from Bar-Ilan’s Gender Studies program, a Kreitman and Israel Institute post-doctoral fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and a Rothschild and ISF postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University.