Paula Hyman
Professor Paula Hyman is the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University and president of the American Academy of Jewish Research. She also served as the first female dean of the Seminary College of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Her research interests include topics in modern European and American Jewish history, with a special emphasis on the history of women and gender. In addition to several books on French Jewry, she has written widely on Jewish women’s history. Among her books are The Jewish Woman in America; Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History; and the two-volume encyclopedia Jewish Women in America, which she co-edited with Deborah Dash Moore. She also edited and introduced Puah Rakovsky’s My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland.
She received a PhD from Columbia University in 1975.
Paula E. Hyman was a founding member of Ezrat Nashim, a group of Conservative Jewish women who in 1972 lobbied for change in the role of women in Conservative Judaism, leading to changes including inclusion of women in a minyan, equal participation in prayer leadership, and ordination as Rabbis.