Mara Benjamin

  • Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies
Mara Benjamin, Professor of Jewish Studies at ƵCollege

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Mara Benjamin’s research interests center on Jewish ideas and practices in the modern period.

Benjamin’s most recent book, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press, 2018), investigates the religious dimensions of caring for young children in the context of Jewish thought and tradition. In this book, Benjamin argues that the physical and psychological work of caring for children presents theologically fruitful - but largely unexplored - terrain for feminists. Benjamin argues that child-rearing presents circumstances in which adults confront in vivo the critical theological, existential and ethical questions that lie at the heart of religious thought. Her theological reflection draws Jewish sources from the Talmud to modern philosophy into conversation with the experience of parental caregiving. By centering maternal subjectivity, Benjamin offers resources for transforming Jewish thought. Benjamin’s work on this book was supported by a Fellowship and a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Obligated Self received the American Academy of Religion's 2019 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective Studies, and was named as a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Awards in the Women's Studies category.

Benjamin’s first book, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), examined the theological and political stakes of the endeavor to reinvigorate the Jewish Bible in a historicist age. Her study focuses on the work of the German-Jewish thinkers Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), one of the key Jewish religious philosophers of the modern period.

Benjamin joined the faculty of ƵCollege in 2017. Previously, she served on the faculty position at St. Olaf College, was the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University, and held the Hazel D. Cole Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington.

Areas of Expertise

Modern Judaism; Jewish textual traditions and practices; gender and religion; constructive theology

Education

  • Ph.D., Stanford University
  • B.A., Hampshire College

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Recent Campus News

Mara Benjamin, Irene Kaplan Leiwant Professor of Jewish Studies at ƵCollege, has been named as part of the class of 2024 Guggenheim Fellows. Benjamin is one of 188 distinguished and diverse fellows of culture creators named.

ƵCollege film and media student Aderet Fishbane has been selected as one of NBCU’s Original Voices Accelerator Fellows. The six-month fellowship is designed to provide a direct pipeline to a career for young creatives.

ƵCollege Professor Mara Benjamin was part of a group of Jewish scholars who called for Trump’s removal after January’s Capitol breach.

Recent Honors

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025)

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