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External review clears Orthodox feminist group of wrongdoing after allegations against its sex-guru founder
(JTA) — Fourteen months after the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance was riven by allegations of sexual harassment against one of its co-founders, an independent investigation into the group has cleared it of wrongdoing.
The investigation by attorneys at a third-party law firm marks a turning point in a painful chapter for the Orthodox feminist organization. The group was upended last year when Bat Sheva Marcus, a prominent sex therapist and one of its founders, revealed in an essay that she had been investigated and forced to resign as board chair due to allegations of workplace harassment. Marcus claimed the allegations reflected “lighthearted remarks” that were blown out of proportion, but those making the allegations said her comments harmed them and hindered their ability to do their jobs.
Although JOFA had already responded to the allegations internally, it commissioned an external review of its past and practices amid questions about whether a group founded to disrupt oppressive gender dynamics ended up reinforcing them. The law firm, Cozen O’Connor, has a unit devoted to helping organizations prevent and better respond to sexual abuse,
Released Wednesday, the review concludes that all of the allegations aired publicly last year were true. But after interviews with 31 people and unfettered access to documents and communications related to JOFA, the report’s authors said they found no other evidence of wrongdoing.
Still, the report says, the group did not live up to its values during the period ending in 2018 during which two executive directors said they were subjected to sexual harassment and inadequate responses to their concerns. Improvements have been made subsequently, the report says.
“Cozen O’Connor found that Jofa’s responses to their reports were aligned with legal requirements and effective practices in place at the time, but that there was more Jofa could have done in each instance to communicate care and concern for the impacted individuals,” states the report, written by two attorneys who are former sex and child abuse prosecutors.
The report includes a series of recommendations, including that the group conduct annual sexual harassment prevention training for both employees and board members, and that it consider more frequent changes to the board’s composition in order “to encourage the infusion of new voices, perspectives, and ideas.”
The crisis has unfolded at a moment when JOFA’s role is uncertain. Its first conference, in 1997, was a landmark moment for Orthodox feminists at a time when women had few opportunities for leadership in Orthodox congregations and communities. But in recent years, the group’s significance has waned as the space it initially carved out has both expanded and grown more crowded.
The investigators did not speak to the two former executive directors whose accusations triggered changes at JOFA and distancing by some of its allies last year. According to the report, the women had declined repeated invitations, “citing their concerns about the impartiality and neutrality given that Cozen O’Connor had been hired by Jofa, and that individuals whose actions they believed to be the subject of the review were still active Board members.”
The two executive directors made their identities and allegations public after Marcus’ essay. Elana Sztokman, who ran the group from 2012 to 2014, said she had been fired the same day she wrote a letter to JOFA’s board saying that Marcus “had been emotionally abusive for over a year.”
The review did not seek to answer whether one of Sztokman’s complaints, that Marcus had given her an unsolicited vibrator, constituted sexual harassment. It found that JOFA’s board did not have a legal responsibility to respond to the allegation when she made it publicly, because she was no longer working there. But the report added that the board had missed an opportunity to improve its culture by not reaching out to her.
Sztokman’s successor, Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, led the group from 2014 to 2018. She said that she, too, had been subjected to what she said was workplace harassment and that her efforts to press the group’s board to respond had not yielded satisfactory responses.
“I was trying to help them do the right thing the whole time,” Weiss-Greenberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last year.
“There’s a #MeToo journal that JOFA did,” she said in that interview, referring to the movement to counter sexual misconduct that began in 2017. “Part of me thought that if we were writing about behaviors that were happening in our own home, we would wake up to it. I was wrong.”
Both women said they had not gone public before Marcus’ essay because of non-disclosure agreements that JOFA required them to sign. The agreements have become controversial in recent years amid growing discussion of the prevalence and costs of workplace harassment and abuse. Amid the flurry of public scrutiny last year, JOFA released all past and present employees from NDAs.
Several board members said they regretted not apologizing to Sztokman, the Cozen O’Connor report says, and on Wednesday, the group’s current leaders again apologized for JOFA’s handling of the women’s criticism in the past.
“We acknowledge that our attention to our former executive directors’ well-being did not comport with the culture that we seek for our staff and organization, and for that we are sorry,” the group’s current board president, Mindy Feldman Hecht, and executive director, Daphne Lazar Price, said in a letter sent to the JOFA community on Wednesday.
After the uproar last year, the group was suspended from the Safety Respect Equity Network, a Jewish advocacy group focused on workplace safety issues that counts about 150 organizations in its fold. According to JOFA’s letter to its community on Wednesday, it is now being readmitted to the network.
The letter also says JOFA’s board has endorsed the report and its recommendations.
Hecht and Price wrote, “We are committed to remaining a positive and formidable force for feminism and to continuing to partner with you to create a more vibrant and equitable Orthodox community.”
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The post External review clears Orthodox feminist group of wrongdoing after allegations against its sex-guru founder appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.