Encyclopedia of Religion and Society

Geffen, Rela Mintz

(1943-) President of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry, 1988-1990; member of the editorial board of its journal, Contemporary Jewry (1985–), of which she assumed the editorship in 1997. Graduate of a joint bachelor’s program of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965; M.A. Columbia University, 1967; Ph.D., University of Florida, 1972.

Geffen’s major research interest within the sociology of religion is the sociology of American Jewry with particular attention to Jewish communal associations, gender roles, the family, and rites of passage as evidenced in her edited volume, Celebration and Renewal: Rites of Passage in Judaism (Jewish Publication Society 1993).

J. Alan Winter