My research seeks to carve out space for Jewish thought and thinkers — particularly the theological sources that have been sidelined or excluded – as Judaism occupies an often-marginal, not-quite-assimilated space in ‘Western’ political thought. My first book project, “The Law is Not in Heaven”: Authority and Covenant in Jewish Political Thought, argues that Jewish conceptions of covenant provide resources for rethinking hegemonic conceptions of authority in the Western political tradition. Through a study of the works of Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Hannah Arendt, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, all in dialogue with the Jewish textual canon, this project explores covenant as both a foundation for authority and a foundation for disobedience and dissent, and, thus, as an alternative to dominant understandings of both religious and political authority via a model of command and obedience.

I am the recipient of a 2022-2023 Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars for my research in religion and ethics.

I am a scholar who is deeply committed to my community wherever I land. I have served in many leadership and communal service roles, including: co-president of the Jewish Graduate Student Association at Cornell University for five years; graduate student representative in the Government Department; graduate student coordinator of the Cornell Political Theory Workshop. In lieu of a traditional Teaching Assistant position in Spring 2021, I served as Undergraduate Studies Assistant, supporting the administration of the undergraduate major and its honors program due to the acting Director of Undergraduate Studies being on leave. My work was overseen by the faculty undergraduate committee and the department chair.

I also teach and speak about Jewish text and tradition on a variety of issues, expertise I have been honing since before graduate school in my work as a Jewish professional. This ranges from co-teaching a Jewish Learning Fellowship course at Cornell Hillel on social justice, to being invited to speak for three years in a row at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington on Judaism and reproductive rights, and various speaking and teaching invitations at synagogues in Ithaca, NY and New York City.

Prior to graduate school, I worked as a policy advocate in Washington, D.C., where I specialized in church-state law. This experience continues to inflect my research and teaching. I received my B.A. magna cum laude in Government and French from Cornell University in 2013. And, in 2024, I earned my Ph.D. in Government (Political Thought) from Cornell.

I can be reached at sarahgreenberg [at] fas [dot] Harvard [dot] edu.