Patheos Featured Writers

Anna Batler is a writer and an attorney based out of Washington, D.C. She writes about faith, feminism, spirituality, and religious identity at Sotah.net

After moving to New Jersey from Azerbaijan, Anna attended an Orthodox Jewish parochial school that first inspired her faith while simultaneously prohibiting her from running for student body president because she was not observant. She became an Orthodox Jew when she started attending a public high school and was a regular at religious outreach events. Today, she no longer affiliates with a specific Jewish movement - though she is involved in a local, lay led, egalitarian community.

After college, Anna completed a one year fellowship at Drisha Institute, in New York, where she studied biblical texts and Talmudic law. She has been a Jewish educator at various schools in New Jersey and was a past programming co-chair at LimmudNY.

Anna conducted ethnographic research studying the lives of traditionally religious Christian, Muslim, and Jewish women at Rutgers University. In the process of getting to know the women, Anna attended evangelical Christian rock concerts, Islamic campus festivals, and classes on menstruation purity laws. 

Anna holds a B.A. in English from Rutgers College and a J.D. with honors from The George Washington University Law School.