Dr. Cara Rock-Singer

In Fall 2024 the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies was pleased to welcome Dr. Cara Rock-Singer to our faculty. Dr Cara Rock-Singer is the Lama Shetzer Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies.  Read about her research and career in this New Faculty Spotlight!

 

How did you first become interested in this area of research?

I am a scholar of Judaism, science, and technology, with particular focus on gender and American Judaism.  I certainly didn’t take the most conventional path to the humanities, though. I was a molecular biology major and took a religion class to fulfill a humanities requirement, and I fell in love. I took more and more religion classes in parallel to my science classes until a mentor suggested I study the intersections of religion and science.  My increasing interest in gender and reproduction, on the other hand, reflected both encountering scholarship that I found compelling as well as my own experience of becoming a mother.

 

What’s your favorite thing about it?

The thing I love most about my area of research is that it is exploratory and creative. As an ethnographer, I am able to immerse in new communities and places, but also inhabit my own worlds in new ways. My research and writing are a creative outlets for understanding American Jewish life and I get to draw on the tools of multiple intellectual traditions—including rabbinics, feminist thought, and modern science —to do so.  

 

Why did you choose to come to the University of Michigan?

I was excited to come to a place with such a vibrant intellectual community, including faculty whose work I’ve long admired, and incredible support for scholarship and teaching. I was also excited to be able to live and raise a family in a lively small city like Ann Arbor.Why do you think it is important to study this area of research?At a pivotal moment for the future of reproductive freedom in the United States, public discussion over how religion, science, and technology shape American law and politics are acutely visible yet narrowly focused on religious freedom and abortion access. My research offers a broad understanding of the role of reproductive bodies in religious and political communities and helps us understand the broader stakes of these debates. 


Why do you think it’s important to study Judaic Studies/Humanities in general?

I often think of James Baldwin’s oft-quoted line, “We made the world we're living in, and we have to make it over.” I think the humanities offer us tools for analyzing the world, so as we navigate, reimagine, and remake it, we can do so knowledgeably and intentionally. My ethnographic research has afforded me deep immersive experiences in feminist communities that are wrestling with pressing contemporary social problems. I have watched these groups use Jewish texts and rituals to address gender, racial, and economic power imbalances in Jewish and American society. These are tools we desperately need, especially in times like these.

 

How has your work evolved since you first started your career?

Since I started my career, my engagement with Jewish texts has significantly expanded. Much of my work now takes the form of what I call “ethnodrashy,” my mix of ethnography—a qualitative study of human life and behavior—with midrash, a rabbinic interpretative technique. I rely on midrash as a textual technology whose rhythm, cycles, and telescoping of time create a disruptive effect on common Euro-American narratives about gender, politics, and religion. 

 

What courses do you teach and what do you want students to take away from them?

I have been indelibly shaped by my undergraduate experience studying STEM in an experimental integrated sciences program, which challenged me to learn through problem solving and collaboration. I strive as a teacher is to “make the familiar strange,” which I do by exposing students to a wide range of genres, perspectives, and sensorial experiences. I also work with students to develop critical skills for reading and writing, and in particular, want students to learn how to ask open, generative questions.This year I am teaching three courses that are new to the University of Michigan. In the fall, I am teaching a lecture, cross-listed with Gender and Women’s Studies and American Culture, called “Women, Gender, and Religion.” I am also teaching a first-year seminar in Judaic Studies, “Jewish Women and the Body of Tradition.” In the winter term, I will be teaching “The American Jewish Life of DNA,” which examines the intersections of genetics with Jewish religion and culture.


What is going to be your next project?

I have begun work on my second book project, Inherited Futures: The American Jewish Life of Genetics and Epigenetics, which incorporates my undergraduate research on genetics and epigenetics into my research on contemporary Judaism. Specifically, Inherited Futures investigates how modern science and technology have created novel forms of Jewish religion: new kinship practices that aimed to eliminate Tay Sachs, ritual communities that lend spiritual support to BRCA carriers, and popular media that has inculcated belief in epigenetic inheritance of Holocaust trauma. This book will shed new light on the role of biological science in imagining Jewish collective identity in 20th-century America.