Affiliated Faculty

Jennifer Thompson, Ph.D., Director, Jewish Studies Program 

• Jewish Studies
• Associate Professor
• Maurice Amado Professor of Applied Jewish Ethics and Civic Engagement
• Office: Santa Susana 232
• Phone: 818.677.2963
• jthompson@csun.edu

• Ph.D., Ethics and Society, Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University
• M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School
• B.A., summa cum laude, Brandeis University, English & American Literature; minor, Comparative Religion; Women's Studies Program
• Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany: International Summer Academy, "Research Strategies in Faith Development and Biographical Study in Contemporary Religion"
• Harvard University: Special Student in Anthropology

Courses taught include:

Sociology of Jewish Families and Communities, Jewish Identity in the U.S., Justice and Judaism, Applied Jewish Ethics, American Jewish Experience

Selected publications:

Jewish on Their Own Terms: How Intermarried Couples are Changing American Judaism

reviews/mentions:

• Religion in American History
• Jewish Book Council
• Project MUSE
• Jewish Philanthropy

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eText:

Applied Ethics, 2015

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map

http://mappingthejewishvalley.com
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articles:

• “He Wouldn't Know Anything”: Rethinking Women's Religious Leadership"
• "Reaching Out to the Fringe: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Morality of Social Science"

Selected Awards/Honors:

• Community Engagement Discipline-Based Grant, Office of Community Engagement, California State University, Northridge, 2013, 2014
• Incentive Regional Allocation Grant for Mapping the Jewish Valley project, The Valley Alliance of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, 2012
• Seminar on Debates about Religion and Sexuality, Harvard Divinity School, 2012
• Center for Ethics, Emory University, Ethics and Servant Leadership Summer Internship Program, 2009
• Graduate Fellowship, Center for Study of Myth and Ritual in American Life, Sloan Center on Working Families, Emory University, 2005–2010

Memberships:

• American Academy of Religion
• Association for Israel Studies
• Association for Jewish Studies
• Society for Scientific Study of Religion
• Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry
• Society of Jewish Ethics

Jeffrey Auerbach, Ph.D., Professor

• History
• Office: Sierra Tower 603
• Phone: 818.677.3561
• jeffrey.auerbach@csun.edu
• Jeffrey Auerbach's webpage

Shira Brown, M.A., Lecturer

• Office location: JR 340
• Phone: 818-677-2780
• shira.brown@csun.edu

Biography

Dorothy Clark, Ph.D., Associate Professor

• English Department
• Office: Sierra Tower 714
• Phone: 818.677.7225
• dorothy.g.clark@csun.edu

Dr. Dorothy Clark is a professor of English. She earned both her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at UCLA and received an M.A. in English and a secondary English Credential from CSUN.  Dr. Clark has been teaching as full-time faculty at CSUN since 2001. 

Teaching

Her interests and courses include Children’s Literature, Yeats, interdisciplinary courses on good and evil, and the Holocaust with a focus on issues of memory and representation.  The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dr. Clark has been a board member of the 1939 Society (the largest Holocaust survivor organization in the U.S.) for over a decade.  She helped to initiate the Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Program’s trips to Poland, leading the first trip in conjunction with Loyola Marymount University in 2010.

Prof. Clark has taught classes on the Holocaust and American Culture and the Rhetoric of Memory—focusing on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

Current Research Interests:

Holocaust education and preserving an “authenticity of memory”; children’s literature and new media; representations of good and evil in popular culture.

Recent Selected Publications:

• Co-editor, Frontiers in American Children’s Literature. Accepted for publication by Cambridge Scholars Press, January 2014.
• "Healing Shattered Worlds: The Unforeseen Effects of a Second Generation Daughter's Return to Her Parents' Polish Village." Tikkun Magazine, Tikkun Daily, December 2011.
• “Hyperread: Repurposing Children’s Literature and Digital Storytelling.”  Postmodern Reinterpretations of Fairy Tales. How Applying New Methods Generates New Meanings.  Ed. Anna Kérchy.  The Edwin Mellen Press, 2011.
• “Being’s Wound: Evil and Explanation in The Killer Inside Me,” in the Enigma of Good and Evil: The Moral Sentiment in Literature, edited by A. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana Book Series 85, The Netherlands: Springer Publications,  December 2005.

Memberships:

• Member of the Editorial Board (Polish Peer Reviewed Journal):  A/R/T Journal: Analyses/Rereading/Theories: A Journal Devoted to Literature, Film and Theatre
• Modern Language Association (MLA)
• Children’s Literature Association (ChLA)
• American Literature Association (ALA)
• Children’s Literature Society, American Literature Association

Beth Cohen, Ph.D., Lecturer

• Religious Studies
• Jewish Studies Program
• beth.cohen@csun.edu

Daniela Gerson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Daniela Gerson is an assistant professor of Journalism at California State University, Northridge, with a focus on community, ethnic and participatory media. Previously she was co-founder of the immigration newsletter Migratory Notes; a senior fellow at the Center for Community Media (CCM); community engagement editor at the LA Times; director of the Community Engagement and Journalism Initiative at University of Southern California; and immigration reporter for the New York Sun. She started her career as director of the Jewish Student Press Service and editor of New Voices Magazine. She has reported for WNYC: New York Public Radio, BBC/ PRI’s The World, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, CNN, The New York Times, among other outlets. She was awarded a first-place RIAS Berlin Commission radio award for her German-language radio documentary Too Many Geisters on the legacy of the Holocaust on the third generation. 

You can find her on Twitter @dhgerson

Recent Jewish-themed articles: 

• Guest Essay: My Grandparents’ Immigration Lies Shaped My Father’s View of Justice
  The New York Times

April 26, 2021

• Saying Kaddish helped me mourn my father. During the pandemic, it helped me build a community.
  Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

• The Grand Refugee Hotel: The Sequel to My Grandfather’s Germany
  Refugees Deeply
  October 8, 2018

Elaine Goodfriend, Ph.D., Lecturer

• Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, History
• Office: Santa Susana Hall 418
• Phone: 818.677.6875 or 818.677-6762 (messages for Jewish Studies), 818.677-3392 (messages for Religious Studies)

EDUCATION AND HONORS

• June 1990: Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies, University of California at Berkeley.  
• September 1982 - June 1983: Fulbright Grant, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
• June 1980: M.A., M.L.S. Concurrent Degree Program in Near Eastern Studies and Librarianship, U.C. Berkeley. Wheeler Fellowship in the Humanities.
• December 1976: B.A. in Semitic Languages, Cornell University;  Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society and graduation with honors. 

TEACHING AREAS 

Teaching courses in Ancient Near East, Bible (Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible), Jewish history, women in Judaism and Jewish culture, general religious studies.

Research in Hebrew Biblical studies. 

Jody Myers, Ph.D., Professor Emerita

We are sad to share the news that Professor Emerita Jody Myers passed away. As Director of the Jewish Studies Program for 34 years, Dr. Myers oversaw vibrant and unique programming that served students and the community. She created opportunities for students to travel to Central Europe, gain career skills in Jewish nonprofit organizations, and learn about Jewish environmental thought together with wilderness-survival skills. Community members enjoyed the Jewish Studies film series and public lectures that she offered. Her influence on CSUN students and the community beyond was deep and wide-ranging, and she will be profoundly missed. Her obituary appeared in the (Minneapolis) StarTribune on Oct. 25, 2022.  

TEACHING AREAS AND RESEARCH INTERESTS

Jewish culture and history, contemporary religious thought, American religious life, sustainability and nature.

BOOKS/PUBLICATIONS

• Feasting and Fasting: The History and Ethics of Jewish Food, co-editor with Aaron S. Gross and Jordan D. Rosenblum (New York University Press, 2019).
• Kabbalah and the Spiritual Quest: The Kabbalah Centre in America (Praeger Publishers, 2007).
• Seeking Zion: Modernity and Messianic Activism in the Writings of Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003). 

Selected Articles:

• “Kabbalah in the Modern Era,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. VIII: The Modern World, 1815 – c. 2000, eds. Mitchell B. Hart and Tony Michels (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
• “Kabbalah Centre: Marketing and Meaning,” for Controversial New Religions, Second Edition, eds. James R. Lewis and Jesper Aagaard Petersen (Oxford University Press, 2014).
• “Jewish Service-Learning Partnerships between Hillel and the Public University: A Case Study,” co-authored with Renée Cohen Goodwin, Journal of Jewish Communal Service, Vol. 87, (Winter/Spring 2012).
• “Teaching Contemporary Israel through the Internet and Student Blogs” in Coping with Diversity: Language and Culture Education, eds. Hanna Komorowska and Lucyna Aleksandrowicz-Pędich (Academica, Warsaw, 2011).
• “Kabbalah for the Gentiles: Diverse Souls and Universalism in Contemporary Kabbalah,” in Kabbalah and Spiritual Revival: Historical, Sociological and Cultural Perspectives, Boaz Huss, ed. (Ben-Gurion University Press, 2011). 
• "The Myth of Matriarchy in Contemporary Jewish Women's Spiritual Writings," Jewish Social Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (Fall, 1997).
• "The Secret of Jewish Femininity: Hiddenness, Power, and Physicality in the Theology of Orthodox Women in the Contemporary World," in Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition, ed. T.M. Rudavsky, (New York University Press, 1995).  Co-authored with Jane Rachel Litman.
• "Messianism and Zionist Ideologies," in Studies in Contemporary Jewry, volume VII (Oxford University Press, for the Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991).

Michele Paskow, M.A.H.L., Lecturer

• Jewish Studies
• Office: Santa Susana Hall 420
• Office Hours: Wed. 11:00 - 11:45 a.m.
• Phone: 818.677.6878 or 818.677-6762 (messages)
• michele.paskow@csun.edu

EDUCATION

• HEBREW UNION COLLEGE, New York, NY: Rabbinic Ordination, 1991; M.A. Hebrew Literature, 1989
• UNITED STATES ARMY CHAPLAINCY SCHOOL: Officer's Basic Course, 1990 - Ft. Monmouth, NJ;
• Officer’s Advanced Course, 2000 – Ft. Jackson, SC
• HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM: Graduate study, Hebrew Literature, 1986-87; Summer study, 1983
• UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES: B.A. Hebrew Language and Literature June 1986, cum laude

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

• CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS (CCAR)
• ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES
• LOS ANGELES BOARD OF RABBIS

Mira Rosenthal, Lecturer

• Modern & Classical Languages and Literature
• Office: Sierra Tower 432
• Phone: 818.677.2019
• mira.rosenthal@csun.edu
• Mira Rosenthal's web page

Mira Rosenthal earned her Advanced Teaching credential in 1978 at the Gordon Seminary, Haifa, Israel. In the first twenty years of her teaching career, she mainly focused on teaching higher education Hebrew classes and Algebra, as well as training new teachers at the Marcus Army School for the IDF and at the Damum Correction Facility Center. In 1978 Mira shifted her focus from teaching native speaking Israelis to teaching Hebrew only to immigrants at Leo Baeck High School, Haifa.

From 1999 to present, Mira has been teaching Hebrew at the Whizin Center for Continuing Education as well as Hebrew grammar and conversation at the American Jewish University's Rabbinical School and at the Jewish Education department. Mira is also a part time faculty member at CSUN's Modern & Classical Languages and Literature department where she teaches beginning and intermediate Hebrew as a second language.

Audrey Thacker, Ph.D., Lecturer

• Office: Sierra Tower 804
• Phone: 818.677.6337
• audrey.thacker@csun.edu

Melissa Weininger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Education

Ph.D., Jewish Studies, The University of Chicago, 2010

B.A., English Language and Literature and Women’s Studies, Harvard University, 1995

Research Interests

Prof. Weininger works in the fields of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, with an emphasis on contemporary Israeli literature. She is completing a book on diaspora Israeli literature and culture. Her other research interests include gender, nationalism, and popular culture, with a particular interest in Israeli television.

Teaching

Prof. Weininger has taught courses on Jewish literature and film, graphic novels, gender and sexuality. At CSUN has taught Women in the Jewish Experience and the American Jewish Experience, and will teach Israel’s History and Peoples, Jewish Ethics, and Nonprofit Internship in the Jewish Community.

Kassandra Wilsey

• Recreation and Tourism Management, Jewish Studies
• Office: Redwood Hall 267
• Phone: 818.677-4652
• kassandra.wilsey@csun.edu

Kassandra graduated top of her class with a Masters Degree in Recreation Management from California State University Northridge. As a part-time instructor in both the Recreation and Tourism Management Department and the Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Program, she teaches outdoor education and environmental sustainability. She also teaches Environmental Judaism which is an examination of teachings on the natural environment found in Jewish literature and oral teachings, with an emphasis on values and practices related to respect for natural life and environmental conservation. It is her goal to bridge the growing gap between students and their natural environment with hopes of a more sustainable future.