Scholarship for society
“Nature.” Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas. Special issue: Jewish Life Tomorrow. Spring 2024.
“Reading Psalms as the Water Rises,” Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas. Spring 2022.
“On the Uses of Academic Privilege.” Part of a series on “Manthologies” hosted by @TheTable: FSR Blog’s Virtual Roundtable Project (May 27, 2019).
Building on my interest in childhood and religion, I have served as a consultant for the CBS Religion & Culture series. Recently aired episode: “Religion & Identity in Young America” (aired March 31, 2019).
A joint session of the Society for Jewish Ethics and the Society for Christian Ethics, “Maternal Experience and Religious Ethics,” was taped, edited and broadcast by Ethics Forward for Forward Radio (WFMP 106.5, Louisville, KY).
From Ethics Forward: Those who speak as moral voices of religion often focus on behaviors associated with reproduction. How strange, then, that mothers have been so marginalized by monotheistic religions. This episode of Ethics Forward brings you four interventions -- two from Jewish perspectives and two from Christian perspectives -- on what religious ethics can learn from maternal experience. The speakers gathered at the joint meetings of the Societies for Christian Ethics, for Jewish Ethics, and for the Study of Muslim Ethics in lovely downtown Louisville Kentucky in January 2019. They graciously agreed to be recorded and the resulting panel discussion is here. The panel features Mara Benjamin of Mt. Holyoke College; Michal Raucher of Rutgers University; Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar of Loyola University Chicago; and Cristina Traina of Northwestern University. It's profound and insightful, but does not require any deep familiarity with theological or philosophical ethics.
“Does Torah trump hate? A View from Modern Jewish Philosophy,” Times of Israel, June 22, 2018
“The Paradox of Subjectivity,” Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, May 2014
The Obligated Self in the media
Yeshiva University Straus center blog: What the Straus Center Is Reading — The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (January 21, 2022)
Religious Studies News: “Caretaking and Childrearing in Modern Jewish Theology with Mara Benjamin” (February 18, 2021)
Judaism Unbound podcast, episode 251: “Judaism… Just How Unbound?” (December 4, 2020)
“The Law of the Baby,” review by Barbara U. Meyer, Jewish Review of Books (Summer, 2020)
New Books Network: Interview (June 25, 2020)
“Being Mother/Being God,” part of a forum on divine motherhood at The Immanent Frame
Recently Published Book Spotlight: The Obligated Self, Blog of the American Philosophical Association (March, 2019)
“Writing about Motherhood,” Indiana University Press blog (March, 2019)
“Claiming the Mantle of Theology,” Learning about Learning Blog, Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education (2014)
The Obligated Self in conversation
“Maker Labs for Ethical and Spiritual Learning: A New Paradigm for Jewish Education – Idea #2,” by Dr. Bill Robinson, for eJewishPhilanthropy. Application of The Obligated Self to Jewish education.