Rahel R. Wasserfall
Wasserfall is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. She has wide-ranging experience in the evaluation of educational programs in complex multilingual and cross-cultural settings. Her work in the world of evaluation focuses on the pragmatic approach to knowledge that continually queries: “knowledge for whom and for which purposes.” Previous assignments include: director of evaluation and liaison to schools of The Center for the Advancement of Hebrew Teaching and Learning, Inc. and senior research associate with Education Matters, Inc. and the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at Brandeis University. At CEDAR, she conducts the yearly evaluation of programs and is part of the leadership team. In the past year, she has moved into training and leading new program developments and evaluations internationally. An anthropologist with a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Wasserfall has gained expertise on three continents. She has published in the area of the anthropology of gender, pluralism and qualitative methods. She is the editor of Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law; coauthor of Living with Difference: How to Build Community in a Divided World (with Adam Seligman and David Montgomery); and is currently working on a book titled Eating Together with Difference, based on her 14 years of evaluating the CEDAR network. As well, she is a committed yoga practitioner and certified teacher in the Iyengar tradition.
