Editorial Team

Dr. David S. Koffman, Editor-in-Chief

David S. Koffman (PhD, NYU, 2011) is the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry and an associate professor in the Department of History at York University, where he teaches courses on Canadian Jewish history, religion in American life, the meanings of money, genealogy as history, modern antisemitism, and religion & capitalism. His published works include, The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America (Rutgers University Press, 2019), No Better Home?: Jews, Canada, and the Sense of Belonging (University of Toronto Press, 2020), and Promised Lands North and South: Jewish Canada and Jewish Argentina in Conversation (Brill, 2024), co-edited with David M.K. Sheinin. He serves as the associate director of York’s Israel & Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies.

Joshua Tapper, Managing Editor

Joshua Tapper is a doctoral candidate in Jewish History at Stanford University, where his dissertation explores the impact of perestroika-era reforms on the Jews of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. His scholarship on the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora has appeared in Canadian Jewish Studies. As a journalist, he has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Tablet, the Jewish Daily Forward, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among other publications. He serves as vice-president of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.

Amir Lavie, PhD, Associate Editor, Digital 

Amir holds a PhD from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. With an academic background in Jewish history and media studies, Amir oversees the journal’s website interface and aims to increase the journal's digital outreach. Amir currently works at the Archives of Ontario. 

Valentina Gaddi, Associate Editor, Book Reviews (French)

Valentina Gaddi is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at Université de Montréal and an IRTG-Diversity scholar. Her thesis, based on three years of ethnographic research, explores the construction of gender among Hasidic Jewish women in Montréal. More broadly, her academic interests focus on the place of pious citizens in democratic societies. She is the co-creator of the podcast Ma-Nishtana and the coordinator of the Collectif Judéité(s) at Université de Montréal.

Vardit Lightstone, Associate Editor, Book Reviews (English)

Vardit Lightstone is the Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow in North American Jewish History and Culture at the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, University of Maryland. She received her PhD in 2022 from the University of Toronto with a Joint Educational Placement at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on migrant identity formation, folk literature, Yiddish folklore, Canadian Jewish culture, and representations of Indigenous peoples in Yiddish literature.

Janice Rosen, Editor, Archives Matter 

Janice Rosen has been the Archives Director since 1989 of the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives, formerly known as the Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives. Her publications include various surveys of Canadian Jewish archival resources and repositories for Canadian Jewish Studies. She is a co-creator of the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network, a database-driven website showcasing the holdings of several partner Archives and Museums.