Lori Lefkovitz
Lori Lefkovitz founded the first-ever women’s studies department at a rabbinical school and helped create Ritualwell.org, a communal source for inclusive, innovative Jewish ritual and prayer. Lefkovitz earned a masters and PhD in English from Brown and received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship in women’s studies, a Golda Meir fellowship at Hebrew University and a Fulbright professorship at Hebrew University, among others. As founding director of Kolot: the Center for Jewish Women and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Lefkovitz created a broad curriculum on issues of gender and sexuality, an annual conference on food and body image in Judaism, and innovative Rosh Hodesh groups for teenage girls. In partnership with Ma’yan, Lefkovitz founded Ritualwell.org, which offers new entry points to Jewish prayer, ranging from rituals for those struggling with fertility and miscarriage to sign language demonstrations of traditional prayers for the hearing impaired. Lefkovitz has written and lectured extensively on gender, sexuality and Judaism, and currently serves as both founding director of Ritualwell.org and professor and director of Jewish studies at Northeastern University.