About Me

I research Jewish political thought, authority, covenant, dissent, and sovereignty. You can read more about my dissertation project and research agenda here. My dissertation research is supported by Cornell University and in 2022-2023, the Foundation for Citizens and Scholars, where I was one of the Charlotte W. Newcombe fellows.

I am a scholar who is deeply committed to my community wherever I land. I have been the co-president of the Jewish Graduate Student Association at Cornell since summer 2018, I served as a graduate student representative in the Government Department (AY 2018-2019), and as the graduate student coordinator of the Cornell Political Theory Workshop (AY 2019-2020). In lieu of a traditional Teaching Assistant position in Spring 2021, I served as Undergraduate Studies Assistant, supporting the administration of the undergraduate major and its honors program due to the acting Director of Undergraduate Studies being on leave. My work was overseen by the faculty undergraduate committee and the department chair. Whether in formal or informal service positions, I continue to be an active member of my department, the larger graduate community, and the Jewish community in Ithaca.

I also teach and speak about Jewish text and tradition on a variety of issues, expertise I have been honing since before graduate school in my work as a Jewish professional. This includes joint-teaching a Jewish Learning Fellowship course at Cornell Hillel (Spring 2020) on Jewish social justice, speaking on Judaism and reproductive rights to young leaders cohorts at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington (2015, 2016, 2017), and teaching on the political theory canon and biblical interpretation (November 2018). I am committed to fostering brave spaces within and around the classroom, for students and colleagues alike.

Prior to graduate school, I was the assistant legislative director at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC (the RAC), where I directed the RAC’s hallmark Eisendrath Legislative Assistant Program and represented the Reform Movement (the largest Jewish Movement in North America) to Congress and the administration as a member of the organization’s Senior Staff. My policy expertise is in church-state issues. I have brought in my first-hand, practical knowledge of policy-making and the functioning of state and federal government in the many American Politics courses for which I’ve been a TA.

I was born and raised in Manhattan and lived in Tokyo, Japan from 1997-1999. I later lived in France during college, when I completed the certificat de programme d’échange at Sciences Po Paris (AY 2011-2012).

I received my B.A. magna cum laude in Government from Cornell University in 2013. My honors thesis was on the French presidential elections of 2012, the politics of memory and symbol construction, aesthetic representation, and questions of presidential legitimacy. I also graduated with a second major in French and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. I received my Master’s degree in Government from Cornell in 2020.