Faculty

Biography

Nora L. Rubel is the Elizabeth Denio Professor and serves as Co-Director of the Center for Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. Trained in American religions, her foundational and ongoing scholarship investigates the complex intersections of race, ethnicity, migration, and religious identity in the United States—with specialized early work examining African American religious movements, conversions, and minority communities.

This expertise informs her interdisciplinary scholarship in American Jewish history, gender studies, and culinary foodways. Her publications explore how domestic spaces, food traditions, and cultural narratives shape religious memory and community boundaries. She is the author of Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) and Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2009). She is also co-editor of Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family (Rutgers University Press, 2024) and Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (Columbia University Press, 2014).

At the University of Rochester, Professor Rubel has served as Chair of the Department of Religion and Classics (2018-2026) and Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (2014–2018). She held the Jane and Alan Batkin Professorship in Jewish Studies prior to her appointment as the Elizabeth Denio Professor. Professor Rubel earned her PhD in American Religions from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• RELC 145:  American Judaism in America
• RELC 153:  Tradition!
• RELC 177:  Kitchen Judaism: Jewish Food Beyond the Bagel and the Bible
• RELC 178:  Religion and Food in America
• RELC 214:  American Exceptions: Religion, Race and Ethnicity

Selected Publications

Books

• Rubel, Nora L. Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book. New York: Columbia University Press, 2026.
• Rubel, Nora L., and Brett Krutzsch, eds. Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2024.
• Dallam, Marie W., Reid Neilson, Nora Rubel, and Benjamin E. Zeller, eds. Religion, Food, and Eating in North America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• Rubel, Nora L. Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• "History in a Jar: The Taste and Trauma of Gefilte Fish." In Food and Memory: Dublin Gastronomy Symposium Proceedings. Dublin, Ireland, 2024.
• "'Happy Yom Kippur': Televising and Translating Atonement." In Blessings Beyond the Binary: Transparent and the Queer Jewish Family, edited by Nora Rubel and Brett Krutzsch. Rutgers University Press, 2024.
• "A Jewish Joy of Cooking? How a 20th Century Cookbook Containing Frog's Legs, Snails, and Ham Became a Beloved Jewish Icon." In The Value of the Particular: Lessons from Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience, edited by Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson. Brill University Press, 2015.
• "The Feast at the End of the Fast: The Emergence of a New American Jewish Practice." In Religion, Food, and Eating in North America, edited by Benjamin E. Zeller, Marie W. Dallam, Reid Neilson, and Nora Rubel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• "'Chased Out of Palestine': Prophet Cherry's Church of the Living God and the Problem of Black Jewish Origins." In The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions, edited by Edward E. Curtis IV and Danielle Brune Sigler. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009.
• "Chicken Soup for the Souls of Black Folk: African American Converts to Judaism and the Negotiation of Identity." Social Compass: International Review of Sociology of Religion 51, no. 3 (2004).