Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies

Janet Krasner Aronson, PhD, is the associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University. Janet's primary research areas include local Jewish community studies, and she has directed studies in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, DC, Palm Beach County, Florida, and Cincinnati, among many other communities. She is interested in emerging trends in Jewish engagement and how best to measure, understand, and respond to these trends.

Janet earned her PhD in social policy at the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis where she examined the impact of Birthright Israel on the parents of the participants. Before joining CMJS, she worked as a computer programmer, a graphic designer and religious school teacher. She was a member of the first cohort of the Barnard College/Jewish Theological Seminary double-degree program, in which she earned bachelor's degrees in computer science and Bible. She has an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Matthew Boxer is an assistant research professor at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute. He earned a Master of Arts in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and a Master of Science and PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his doctoral dissertation focused on the effects of Jewish community size on Jewish identity. His research varies widely and includes the socio-demography and social psychology of the Jewish community, altruistic behaviors and preferences, Israel studies, formal and informal Jewish education, and antisemitism. He is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life  at Colby College.

Leonard Saxe is Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and directs the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University. He is the recipient of the 2012 Marshall Sklare Award.

Professor Saxe is a social psychologist, as well as a methodologist, and is concerned with the application of social science to social policy issues. His present focus is on religious and ethnic identity and specifically addresses issues relevant to the Jewish community.

Matthew Brookner is an associate research scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute. At CMJS and SSRI, he is the lead data analyst on Jewish community studies. In addition to community studies, Matt has coauthored needs assessments of interfaith couples, working women and households in poverty.

Matt completed his PhD at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where he wrote his dissertation on philanthropy education. He holds masters' degrees in both public policy and Jewish professional leadership from Brandeis, and has a bachelor's degree in classics and history.

Raquel Magidin de Kramer is an associate research scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute. She is currently working on the Jewish demography project.

Raquel has extensive experience in educational research and statistical analysis. Prior to joining CMJS, she worked as a research associate at the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy housed at Boston College, and as a statistics and computer analyst at the Henrietta Szold Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences in Israel. She has also worked as a software engineer in the private sector for several years. She received a joint BSc in Education and Atmospheric Sciences as well as an MA in Education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She received her PhD from the department of Research Measurement and Evaluation at Boston College. She is fluent in Spanish and Hebrew.

Daniel Nussbaum is a research associate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute. He provides data management and analysis for various research projects, including the population project, the Jewish electorate, COVID-19 impact, and local Jewish community studies. He completed his BS in psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and then earned an MA in Jewish Professional Leadership and a Master of Public Policy from Brandeis University in 2020. While in graduate school, Daniel also worked as a data analyst intern at Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, where he developed a COVID-19 partner impact survey and an interactive data dashboard of past community study data.