Vanessa L. Ochs

Vanessa L. Ochs is a professor emerita of religious studies at the University of Virginia, where she cofounded the Jewish Studies Program. She holds degrees from Tufts University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Drew University, and received a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her scholarship and writing address Judaism, Jewish feminism, ritual, and spirituality.

Ochs is the author of Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child in an Unpredictable World, Inventing Jewish Ritual, which won the 2007 National Jewish Book Award, Sarah Laughed, Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred, and The Passover Haggadah: A Biography. She also coauthored The Jewish Dream Book with Elizabeth Ochs and coedited The Book of Jewish Sacred Practices.