Max Strassfeld

Max Strassfeld is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies. Their research focuses on rabbinic literature, transgender studies, and Jewish studies. They hold a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University. Their research has been published in the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, Trans Studies Quarterly, and QTR: The Journal of Trans and Queer Religion. 

Strassfeld’s first book, Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature, was published in 2023 by the University of California Press. The book was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards and won the American Academy of Religion’s award for excellence in the category of textual studies. In this groundbreaking work, Strassfeld explores eunuchs and androgynes in Jewish law, drawing connections between classical Jewish texts and trans and intersex studies. Trans Talmud argues that eunuchs and androgynes are central to imagining categories of gender in rabbinic law, and that they work to denaturalize the assumption that that “Judeo-Christian” cultures have been invested in a timeless gender binary.

In recognition of their work, Strassfeld has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Frankel Fellowship, the Hadassah-Brandeis fellowship, and the Berlin Prize. They are the associate editor of the journal QTR: A Journal of Trans and Queer Religion. They have served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, served as a board member for the Association for Jewish Studies, and was a member of the AAR’s committee on the status of LGBTQI+ persons in the field. 

Max Strassfeld is currently working on three book-length projects. The first, An Unusable Past is a autotheoretical work on “negative” emotions through a trans studies lens. Drawing on recent research in trans studies, Strassfeld writes about topics such as dysphoria and disgust. The book weaves together rabbinic sources, Strassfeld’s family history in Weimar Germany, and a discussion of contemporary white nationalist eugenic anti-trans politics. Strassfeld lays out the ways that trans historical projects have been drafted into the project of proving trans existence and the contemporary anti-trans moment. Inspired by Palestinian historians, Strassfeld calls for new trans historical approaches that create histories that are resistant and “unusable,” as a counter to white nationalist colonial historical narratives.  

Strassfeld’s second book project, Disciplining Life, examines the concept of life cycle rituals in Jewish history. Scholars have argued that the life cycle is a central concept animating Judaism, and that the seeds of contemporary life cycle rituals can be found in rabbinic literature. Feminists in the 1990s critique the androcentrism and heterosexism of life cycle rituals, and offer new approaches that address other significant moments in the life cycle. This book project traces the history of the term “life cycle” in religious studies to its roots, where it was used to describe “primitive religion” and how it ritualized life and body transitions (instead of seeking scientific explanations for life transitions). In other words, “life cycle ritual” comes out of evolutionary thinking about religion, rooted in colonial, racialized, and heterosexist ideological frameworks. “Life cycle” as a term enters into U.S. Jewish Studies in the wake of WWII, where life cycle ritual was used to describe the liveliness of a Jewish world in Europe that had largely disappeared. Toggling between the post WWII historical moment and rabbinic sources about birth, marriage, puberty, illness, and death,  Strassfeld asks the question: what is to be gained (and lost) by imagining a universal trajectory for life, with discrete transitions between states that can be ritualized?

Max Strassfeld’s third book-length project is an edited volume which they are co-editing. Transing Jewish Studies offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the question of how central narratives in Jewish Studies must change if we take seriously the interventions of trans studies. 

In addition to their written scholarship, Strassfeld is currently working on a creative project that draws on book binding, box making, and image transfer techniques. The project centers around a photo from 1920s Berlin that features two trans women and Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jewish sexologist, seated on a bench.  Strassfeld, along with their artistic collaborators, recreated the photo in both a 1920s version and a contemporary version. Toggling between the Weimar period, the lead up to the U.S. and German elections in 2024, and the genocide in Gaza, the photos pose questions about the fungibility of genders and historical periods. The physical techniques to transfer the images invokes the transmission of history and the project of building an archive in precarious political times. 

• Ph.D. Stanford University, 2013