Vanessa
L.
Ochs

University of Virginia
Samuel T. Lachs Fellow

Bio

Vanessa L. Ochs is a professor emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia where she cofounded the Jewish Studies Program. Ochs was awarded a creative writing fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. Her book, Inventing Jewish Ritual won the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. 

Ochs earned her Ph.D. from Drew University.

Selected publications

  • The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2020).
  • Sarah Laughed: Modern Lessons from the Wisdom and Stories of Biblical Women (University of Nebraska Press, 2011).

Fellowship

2019–2020

Devoted to the home, and seeking to advance research that will shed light on this most formative and intimate of contexts for Jewish life. 

2025–2026

This international cohort brings a fascinatingly diverse set of projects exploring the many ways that Jewishness is expressed and contested across geographies of the contemporary moment.