Degrees:
Ph.D., Brandeis Univ.
M.A., Jewish Theological Seminary
B.A., Univ. California-Los Angeles
Benjamin Steiner is a scholar of American Judaism who completed his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University in 2020. He earned a master’s degree in Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2014 and a bachelor’s degree in history at UCLA in 2012.
Steiner’s first book, currently under publication review, investigates translations of Jewish marriage contracts (ketubot) into English to illuminate how Jews ensured the economic security of married Jewish women under secular law, how Judaism was received by curious non-Jewish audiences, and how Jewish marriage contracts enshrined gender role expectations of the day. He has also published peer-reviewed articles on Judaism in postwar America.
In the classroom, Steiner prioritizes student engagement by probing the building blocks of critical reading. What argument was put forth? Was it convincing? What work is it doing? How does it link to the broader literature? At its best, academic literature is not just a chronicle of facts; it is about how one organizes facts in the service of a compelling argument. |
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American Judaism
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Jewish gender studies
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Jewish religion
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Jewish marriage contracts
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Jewish gender studies
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Postwar American Jewish life
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Jewish material culture
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Journal Articles:
- “Postscript on the Charleston Shtar Halitzah.” American Jewish Archives Journal (Forthcoming)
- “The Lieberman Clause Revisited.” American Jewish Archives Journal 69:1 (2017), 41-70.
- “Victorian Jewry, Religious Reform, and the Ketubah of the British Chief Rabbinate.” Modern Judaism 37:3 (October 2017), 316-337.
- “That Judaism Might Yet Live: Pastoral Care and the Making of the Post-Holocaust Conservative Rabbinate.” American Jewish History 101:2 (April 2017), 265-286.
Presentations:
- “The Ketubah in Antebellum South Carolina and Georgia,” American Jewish Historical Society Biennial Scholars Conference. 24 June 2020.
- “Jewish Marriage Contracts in Early California,” Western Jewish Studies Association Conference, Palm Desert, California. 5 May 2019.
- “A Transnational Story: The Proliferation of a Ketubah Translation from England,” British Association for Jewish Studies Conference, Durham, UK. 11 July 2018.
- “From America to Australia: The Global Spread of the Ketubah of the British Chief Rabbinate,” Association for Jewish Studies Conference, Washington, D.C. 17 December 2017.
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- Nahum and Anne Glatzer Dissertation Prize, Brandeis University, 2020.
- Scholar-in-Residence, Hadassah Brandeis Institute, 2019.
- Summer Research Funding, American Academy for Jewish Research, 2019.
- Bancroft Library Robert E. Levinson Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 2018.
- Starkoff Fellow, American Jewish Archives, 2018.
- Henry L. Feingold Graduate Student Essay Prize, American Jewish Historical Society, 2016.
- Marguerite R. Jacobs Memorial Fellow, American Jewish Archives, 2016.
- Graduate Fellowship, Cardozo Law School, 2015.
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