Lori Hope Lefkovitz
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Brown University (M.A., PhD)
Lori Hope Lefkovitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 6, 1956 |
| Title | Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies |
| Children | 2 |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Brandeis University Brown University (M.A., PhD) |
| Thesis | The Character of Beauty: Innovation and Tradition in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel (1984) |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Jewish studies |
| Institutions | Northeastern University |
Lori Hope Lefkovitz (born May 6, 1956) is an American Jewish studies academic. She works at Northeastern University, where she serves as the Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and directs the Jewish Studies Program.[1] She is the founding director of Kolot: The Center for Jewish Women and Gender Studies,[2] the first such center at a rabbinical seminary.
Teaching and academia
A graduate of Brandeis University, Lefkovitz received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Brown University and was a recipient of a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship in women's studies, a Golda Meir post-doctoral fellowship at Hebrew University, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis, and in 2004, a Fulbright Professorship at Hebrew University. She was previously an associate professor at Kenyon College.
Among the courses she teaches or has taught at RRC are: Literary Approaches to Bible; Bible and the Feminist Imagination; Writing for the Rabbinate; Gender and Judaism; Queering Jewish Studies; Jewish Literature.
Lefkovitz serves on editorial and professional boards and lectures widely to academic and Jewish audiences.
Feminism
Lefkovitz has expressed interest in reviving or reclaiming Jewish women's folk practices[3] and holidays.[4]
Since Kolot's founding in 1996, Lefkovitz has convened a landmark conference, together with the Renfrew Center, on Food, Body Image & Judaism, which examined eating disorders; established the Rosh Hodesh: "It's a girl thing!" program, that has popularly been adopted across the country; and, together with Ma'yan, co-founded Ritualwell.org, a website for contemporary Jewish ritual now maintained exclusively by Kolot, with Lefkovitz as its executive editor. Through a joint initiative, she established a program with Temple University awarding a certificate in Jewish Women's Studies.[citation needed]
Personal life
She is married to Rabbi Leonard Gordon, spiritual leader of Bnai Tikvah, in Canton MA, with whom she has two daughters.[citation needed]
