Mara Benjamin,
Assistant Professor of Religion
Mara holds degrees from Hampshire College (B.A. 1994), a Diploma in Jewish Studies from Oxford University (1996), and Stanford University (Ph.D. 2005). Her field of specialization is modern Jewish thought. Before coming to St. Olaf in 2008, she held the Hazel D. Cole Fellowship in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington (2004-2005) and the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellowship in Judaic Studies at Yale University (2005-2008). She has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and in a variety of non-academic settings. Areas of scholarly and teaching interest include Jewish textual traditions and practices, including biblical, rabbinic, and contemporary hermeneutics; modern European Jewish history and thought; and feminist theology. Current and past courses include “Judaism’s Bible,” “Law and Spirit,” “God After Auschwitz,” “Introduction to Judaism,” “Jewish and Christian Feminisms,” “Negotiating Religion and State,” and “Modern Jewish Thought.”
Mara’s first book, Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity (Cambridge, 2009), examines the theological and political stakes of the endeavor to reinvigorate Jewish intellectual and social responses to the Bible, focusing on the work of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), one of the most important Jewish religious thinkers of the modern period. Her articles have appeared in Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History and Jewish Social Studies please click on the following links Article #1 or Article #2 if you would like to take a look at them.
Mara serves on the Association for Jewish Studies Women’s Caucus and as the modern Judaism section editor for Religious Studies Review.
Office:
Boe Chapel 108A
E-mail:
mbenj@stolaf.edu
