Vanessa Ochs is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia where she teaches courses in Judaism, the anthropology of religion, and spiritual writing. She is working on two projects now, which are linked not only to each other, but to her previous work in the study of religion and material culture and the study of Jewish ritual innovation. The first project is a “biography” of the Passover Haggadah, which will be part of a series of “biographies” of canonical texts to be published by Princeton University Press. The second is a multi-year, multi-site ethnography of Jewish homes in America that answers a question she has long been pondering, “What—from the perspective of material culture—makes a Jewish home Jewish?” To find more information about Vanessa’s work, click here.

To learn more about Vanessa at her author’s page, click here.