
Sari Fein is Visiting Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies at Smith College in Northampton, MA. She received her PhD in 2022 from Brandeis University with a dissertation entitled Conceiving Motherhood: The Reception of Biblical Mothers in the Early Jewish Imagination, which is currently being reworked for publication as a monograph. Her current research uses textual and material sources to interrogate how women exercised agency and authority over their reproductive lives in Jewish antiquity, and an article on this topic is forthcoming in Advances in Near Eastern and Biblical Research.
In the ancient world, reproduction was critically important yet fraught with risk. Survival of not only the family but the community itself was dependent upon women's success in conceiving, bearing, and raising children. This talk explores how women in antiquity navigated these physical and social vulnerabilities and exercised agency over their reproductive lives. We will explore texts from the Torah and rabbinic literature alongside magical objects such as incantation bowls and amulets for what they reveal about women's reproductive experiences in Jewish antiquity. Through this conversation, we will gain a deeper understanding about how Jews in the ancient world understood larger issues such as bodies, health, communal identity, and religious belief.
Sponsor: Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies at University of Tennessee Knoxville