Or Porath, an Assistant Professor at Tel Aviv University, the Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Japanese Religions, and an associate editor for the journal Japanese Religions. Porath specializes in Buddhist Studies and East Asian religions, with a focus on the history of gender and sexuality and Buddhist monasticism. He is a scholar of Japanese religions, particularly focusing on the influential Tendai school of Buddhism and its doctrines and practices, as well as the intersection between the Esoteric Buddhist worldview and sexuality. Porath is the co-editor of Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts (with Fabio Rambelli, 2022). Porath’s current book project, tentatively titled The Dharma of Sex: Initiation, Deification, and Passion in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, explores the “consecration of acolytes” (Chigo Kanjō) and how male-male sexual acts were sanctified and legitimized within Tendai doctrinal thought and monastic society.