Lisa Joffe

Dr. Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is the Shulamit Reinharz Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and a faculty affiliate in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She is an expert on women’s rights under Jewish family law and on the intersection between secular and religious family law. Her publications include Gender, Religion and Family Law: Theorizing Conflicts Between Women’s Rights and Cultural Traditions (2012); The Polygamy Question (2015); Women’s Rights and Religious Law, (2016) and a special issue of Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues on New Historical and Legal Perspectives on Jewish Divorce (Volume 31, 2017). She is editor of the Brandeis University Press Series on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law, and of the HBI Series on Jewish Women. She is a co-founder of the Boston Agunah Task Force, devoted to research, education and advocacy for women under Jewish family law. She holds three law degrees, from Osgoode Hall Law School and Harvard Law School, served as law clerk to Justice Iacobucci of the Supreme Court of Canada, and was called to the bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Before coming to Brandeis, she taught English law and comparative law at the Faculty of Laws, University College, London.