Sari Fein

Sari Fein is is a scholar of women and gender in early Judaism, with a focus on motherhood, magic, and material culture. She has taught at Smith College since 2021 and currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies. Fein received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, where she taught in the University Writing Program and received a University Prize Instructorship to design and teach an undergraduate course on gender, sex, and sexuality in the ancient world.

At Smith, Fein teaches courses on women and gender in Jewish history, motherhood in early Judaism, rabbinic literature, constructions of the sacred in Jewish antiquity, and Judaism and feminism.

Fein’s research uses both classical and cutting-edge approaches to illuminate unexpected aspects of Jewish art and literature in antiquity. She has published journal articles and book chapters on these topics, recently including “The Queering of Time at the End of the World: A Reflection with 4 Ezra” (Bible and Critical Theory, 2024), and “A ‘Queer’ Mother of Nations: Reproductive Futurism and the Maccabean Mother of Seven” (Journal of Ancient Judaism, November 2023), which received an article prize from the Society of Biblical Literature. She is currently preparing a book manuscript tentatively titled Conceiving Motherhood: Biblical Mothers and the Birth of the Jewish People in the Second Temple Period and Late Antiquity. She is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Association for Jewish Studies.