Vanessa Ochs

Vanessa Ochs, Ph.D., Professor in the University of Virginia Department of Religious Studies and a core member of the Jewish Studies Program teaches such topics as Jewish feminism, Jewish weddings, the Passover Haggadah, spiritual writing, and ethnography. She is Chair of the Professional Consulting Committee: UVA CPE and has been a faculty member of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship. Her books include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2020), Inventing Jewish Ritual (winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award), Sarah Laughed, The Jewish Dream Book (with Elizabeth Ochs), Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred, and Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child In An Unpredictable World. For her writing, she was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.