Keren McGinity

Keren McGinity
Giving A Jewish Response To #MeToo
“There needs to be a Jewish response to the #MeToo movement.”
That was the clarion call from Jewish Studies professor Keren McGinity detailing some of the harassment she had personally suffered in the Jewish institutional world.
A gender historian who specializes in the changing meanings and experiences of Jewish intermarriage, her story was no less forceful for the irony that one of the few times in which converts, intermarried women and Jewish women are treated similarly is when they are being sexually harassed.
The original op-ed in the New York Jewish Week was both an account of an anonymous harasser and a broader call for self-searching on a communal level:
If we want to create positive cultural change for ourselves and for our daughters, women must speak out and the Jewish community must act.
In the days that followed, it became clear — especially through the reporting of Hannah Dreyfus — that McGinity’s harasser was Steven M. Cohen, a hitherto widely-respected and cited expert on Jewish demography. Several other women accused him of significant improprieties, leading to his apology and resignation.
The admission brought into question the profoundly influential work that Cohen had done for the Jewish community over decades. Had his attitude toward women colored his understanding of continuity?
Many institutions which had used his expertise regularly — including this one — cut ties with him as Cohen retreated to do teshuva for his abuses.
But McGinity’s larger, communal, point is still in play. She has set an example by serving on the Sexual Misconduct Task Force of the Association for Jewish Studies, but until we, as a community, craft a meaningful response to the #MeToo moment, we are all guilty of endangering our daughters’ future.
— Dan Friedman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee said there’s ‘no such thing as a Palestinian.’ It’s worth thinking about what that means
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Fast Forward Yarden Bibas says ‘I am here because of Trump’ and pleads with him to stop the Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Trump’s plan to enlist Elon Musk began at Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave
-
Film & TV In this Jewish family, everybody needs therapy — especially the therapists themselves
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.