Sarah Imhoff
3rd year PhD Student in the History of Judaism, University of Chicago Divinity School
BA - Stanford University
MA - University of Chicago Divinity School
When I graduated from Stanford University, I had a dual bachelors degree in mathematics and religious studies. Math had always come easily to me, but I was drawn to think about religion by two very dynamic--and very different--professors. One of them, Arnie Eisen, sparked my interest in studying American Judaism. What has been distinctive about Judaism in the context of America the "Christian nation"? How have individuals and communities been changed and challenged over the history of the United States? Although I loved studying religion, I had always assumed that religious studies was just my "fun" major and it was my math degree that would pay the bills. But after a little while in the real world, I realized that I missed the academic study of religion. I missed it so much that the life of a poor graduate student began to sound far superior to the comfortable life of a mathematician. And so I applied to graduate school.
I received my MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2005 and immediately entered the PhD program in the History of Judaism area. The University of Chicago has been a good, if somewhat surprising, fit for me academically. My academic focus has remained on American Jewish history, and since none of the Divinity School faculty works on these topics directly, I have the privilege of working with a number of excellent minds. Professors Clark Gilpin and Catherine Brekus both do their primary work in American religious history, Professor Brekus also pays special attention to gender in religious history, Professor Michael Fishbane works on rabbinic Judaism, issues of reading text, and history, and Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr works on modern Jewish thought. Such a diverse group affords me the luxury of training in several different viewpoints and provides me with different (although related) sets of questions to bring to my studies.
Because of a growing interest in historiography, I recently presented a paper to the American Religious History Workshop entitled "America's New Israel: The Fate of Jews and Judaism in American Religious Histories," which examined the trope of America as the new promised land and simultaneously the presentation of Judaism within American historical narratives. But at the fore of my current academic thought has been a recent conference that I co-organized with fellow PhD student, Larisa Reznik. The goal of the conference, "Modernity's Other?," was to examine issues of gender and Judaism in modern history and thought. The idea for the conference grew out of a series of "what-if" conversations. If, with the Enlightenment, the male Jew came to be seen as feminized, how were female Jews theorized and perceived? How did gender dynamics within the Jewish community change because of such "feminizing" rhetoric? We had many more questions, and thus grew the idea for a conference that would address these two sets of questions: one historical, one theoretical. The conference took place on February 12-13, 2007 and featured Daniel Boyarin, Barbara Hahn, Paula Hyman, Shulamit Magnus, and Maeera Shreiber.
For better or for worse, the thirst that led me away from a math career and toward an academic one in the field of religion has not been quenched. If anything, my years at the University of Chicago have convinced me that I will never run out of questions and curiosity for the study of American Judaism and its history. Once I finish my PhD, I will look for a permanent position on the other side of the lecture podium.