Jewish Sex Therapists Battle Their Professional Association

For many Jews in the U.S., Oct. 7 became a litmus test for friendships, workplaces, social groups, and professional organizations. When employers refused to comment on the tragic events, some workers quit their jobs. When colleagues joined petitions to boycott Jewish authors, writers joined forces and spoke out. When friends posted anti-Zionist content on social media, young Jews turned inward. When universities allowed hate speech, professors gave up their tenure. But what happens when the one failing the test is the largest, most important certifying body in your field?

This is the story of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists—and its many disappointed, disillusioned Jewish members. Founded in 1967, AASECT, per its website, is a not-for-profit, interdisciplinary professional organization, “increasingly recognized as the guardian of professional standards in sexual health.” According to sources in the field, while not the only certifying body in the country, AASECT is considered the most prestigious and well-respected, with a rigorous certification process. Along with the coveted certificate, AASECT offers a membership with annual fees—which allows members access to a listserv—an active forum of fellow professionals, and exposure to lucrative career opportunities.

To add to its gravitas, AASECT is somewhat international; it accepts applications from Canada and Mexico, as well as Israel, which makes the following events even more curious.

The problem started—although some members claim there were precursory signs—the day after Oct. 7; Caleb Jacobson, an Orthodox Jew and the president of the Nashville-based School of Sex Therapy, was leading a workshop in Amsterdam, opening the class, he said, “by addressing the atrocities.” He expected his organization to do the same. “I was patiently waiting for AASECT to make a statement toward our colleagues in Israel,” he said, adding that the expectation was purely about acknowledging the Israeli members of the organization, “nothing political.”

No such statement came. For Talli Yehuda Rosenbaum, one of the seven Israeli members of AASECT, this came as a surprise at first: “Although AASECT isn’t political, they’ve taken positions related to social justice and sexual violence in the past,” she said. “Right after the murder of George Floyd, a statement supporting BLM was issued almost immediately. It was absolutely anticipated that we, the Israeli members, would feel the support of the organization.”

But silence ensued. Having waited for a week, Jacobson, still in Europe, then drafted a letter calling for AASECT to address the massacre and kidnapping of Israelis. He sent it, with three co-signers and 26 collected signatures, to AASECT’s Board of Directors, and posted it on the listserv. “We have witnessed, in recent years, the organization’s compassionate outreach to various causes,” it reads, in part, “and we encourage the organization’s dedication to advocating for human rights to be shown once again in light of the atrocities over the last few days.”

While the letter didn’t yet yield a response from AASECT, it did get Jacobson into an argument with then-President-elect Lexx Brown-James over the content of some heated discussions on the organization’s forum—in which, some Jewish members say, their voices were heavily moderated and censored. (Brown James did not respond to requests for comment.)

According to Logan Levkoff, a co-signer of the letter, while some members were allowed to claim the IDF commits sexual violence against Palestinian women, cite the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace, and use the words “colonization” and “genocide,” pushbacks—such as a link to Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary Screams Before Silence—were denied publication.

The tension in the AASECT listserv remained strong, with several exchanges looking painfully familiar to anyone who had partaken in a social media debate with anti-Zionists. Amid all that, in November, AASECT did issue a couple of statements—one of them being the official response to the Oct. 7 events, signed by Colby Agostinelli, communications chair, which was initiated at the organization’s DEI committee (officially JEDI, standing for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) and, according to sources from within the organization, went through heavy revisions.

Another, by then-President Rosalyn Dischiavo, followed, highlighting that “AASECT has never spoken out against a country, or a region of the world. We did speak out against the violence, we named antisemitism in that vision.”

“It was very ‘all lives matter,’” said Levkoff of the statements, in which broad turns of phrase and a repeatedly cited “lack of a formal position statement on the current issue in Israel/Gaza” leave little to no room for the murders and sexual violence committed against Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7. And while there was mention of a revision to the organization’s Vision on Sexual Health to include antisemitism specifically, the overall neutrality and lack of acknowledgment, said Yehuda Rosenbaum, made her feel “abandoned, not validated, not supported, like I no longer wanted to belong to an organization where the rhetoric was making me and many other Jewish people feel very uncomfortable.”

One aspect that stands out—and makes this particular scenario unique—is the unmissable connection between AASECT’s affiliation with sexual safety and the many acts of sexual violence that took place on Oct. 7, which were finally condemned by UN Women in December 2023. “There was an expectation for acknowledgment or support that condemns the sexual violence,” said Elana Gottfried.

“This organization is committed to sexual freedom and people’s sexual rights,” pointed out psychotherapist and sex therapist Shoshana Bulow. “But nothing was said, not even ‘sexual violence has no place in our world, no matter what your politics.’” On the other hand, Levkoff and Gottfried said, some members of the organization were allowed to question the validity of the sexual violence claims made by Israel, on the listserv.

The double standard, some members say, didn’t end there. Several Jewish AASECT members had tried to reach out to the organization’s leadership in those first difficult months, pleading to even out the discourse or stand up for them in more significant ways. “There were letters, phone calls, meetings, group chats—so much effort directed toward an organization that routinely says, ‘if a minority group tells you they feel a certain way, believe them, and do the work,’” said Bulow. “But they weren’t doing the work. They weren’t believing us. They weren’t embracing us. There was nothing that is afforded to every other group that was given to Jews.”

Finally, in January, Bulow, Jacobson, Levkoff, Gottfried, Rosenbaum, and some 17 of their Jewish colleagues, collectively resigned from AASECT, to very little fanfare. “It was like ‘don’t let the door kick you on your way out,’” recalled Gottfried. “Nobody reached out, nobody cared—there was a lot of gaslighting instead.”

Famously, gaslighting makes one question their own beliefs and feelings, but most doubts were removed last month, when AASECT announced the appointment of a new JEDI board member: Molly Adler, LCSW, CST. In her statement, Adler identifies as a “queer, Jewish, anti-Zionist, abled, white, cisgender, mid-size, polyamorous, pansexual femme.”

To Gottfried and her colleagues, the move told everything there was left to know about their former umbrella organization. “Now they’re unapologetically, proudly, bringing an anti-Zionist director of DEI,” Gottfried said. “The irony of this makes me sick. This field is supposed to be a safe place. This wouldn’t have happened with any other minority group.” To Israel-based Rosenbaum, the addition of Adler seems a “really poor choice,” while Levkoff calls the announcement “very strategic” and a “full tokenism moment.”

On a national scale, what happened at AASECT is symptomatic of a bigger picture in the field; from attempts to blacklist pro-Israeli therapists to the American Psychological Association’s watered-down condemnation of Oct. 7, Jewish mental health professionals have had quite a year. The former members of AASECT remain rather pessimistic about the organization—and the field at large. “I’m not feeling hopeful. Just praying that the pendulum will swing back before too much more damage is done,” said Bulow.

“For a field that is so quick to dismantle binaries, they sure love to put Jews in a box,” Levkoff added. “What I hope for AASECT and the sexuality professions as a whole is the courage to publicly recognize their institutionalized antisemitism and the vulnerability to admit that they have failed their Jewish and Israeli membership—and clientele—by willfully ignoring our history, our complexities, and our generational trauma.”