Pamela S. Nadell (born 1951) is an American historian, researcher, author, and lecturer focusing on Jewish history. Former President of the Association for Jewish Studies, she currently holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History at American University. Nadell has focused her research on Jewish women and their role within Jewish history as well as in shaping the history of the United States through their role in various social and political movements.

Life and education

Nadell was born to Alice and Irwin M. Nadell in 1951.^[1]

After graduating from Livingston High School, she attended Douglass College of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where she majored in Hebraic Studies graduating with high honors. Nadell spent her junior year abroad studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

She continued her studies at Ohio State University where she earned her Masters in Jewish History (1976) and doctorate in American Jewish History (1982). While completing her doctorate on Eastern-European Jewish Migration patterns, Nadell was honored by Ohio State President, Harold Enarson, for her excellence as a teaching assistant. ^[2]

Scholarship

Nadell's scholarship focuses on American Jewish history, especially this history of American Jewish women. Her books include Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination and America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today. Her work brings to the fore Jewish women previously ignored in most history books.^[3] She highlights the roles women have played in changing historically set precedents. In doing so she has publicized the names of the first women to push against the established male-only rabbinates of the United States, tracing the origins of that debate to the late 19^th century to an article in the Jewish Exponent, "A Problem for Purim," by the journalist Mary M. Cohen, a member of the historic Philadelphia synagogue, Congregation Mikveh Israel.^[4] Dedicating her work to advancing the scholarship laid down by historians of women's history, Nadell has ventured to explore the means in which women traditionally shut out of religious spaces continue to assert influence within and outside the religious domain.^[5]

In America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, religion becomes only one of the diverse commitments and activities of Jewish women. In this groundbreaking history, Nadell shows two threads binding the nation's Jewish women: a strong sense of self and a resolute commitment to making the world a better place. Informed by the shared values of America's founding and Jewish identity, Nadell highlights Jewish women's activism in the history of the nation they came to call home. She writes about the colonial era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter poet Emma Lazarus, about labor organizer Bessie Hillman and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She discusses Jewish women's activism in the labor, birth control, suffrage, civil rights, and feminist movements. She also discusses sexual assaults of sweatshop workers during the mid-20^th century, as well as the hardships many women would endure as agunot, women whose husbands cannot or will not grant them a religious divorce who can never remarry under Jewish law.^[6]

Role in public life

After being elected in 2014, Nadell served as president of the Association of Jewish Studies from 2015 to 2017. While president, Nadell wrote an open letter to Hungarian President Zoltán Balog in opposition of the controversial amendments being made to the National Higher Education Law.^[7] The amendment, which would add additional obstacles to universities operating outside European Union (EU) countries with sister-schools inside the EU. In her letter, Nadell would express concern that such obstacles with encumber scholarship coming out of the Budapest-based Central European University.

Nadell penned another letter as president, along with the Association of Jewish Studies executive board to Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer expressing concern over amendments made to the Israeli Entry into Israel Law. The law, which would prohibit the issuing of visas to foreign nationals who have made "public calls for boycotting Israel." For Nadell, who herself identifies as a free-speech advocate, an attempt to suppress the speech of others would be seen as a deep concern.

Nadell voiced similar free-speech concerns in 2017 before the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The hearing would come as Members of Congress debated adding language to a proposed bill defining antisemitism as language which would "demonize, delegitimize, or apply a double standard to Israel."^[8] In her testimony, Nadell alleged that such a definition would only limit free speech, and stated that Jewish students "feel safe on campus" without restrictions.

Publications

Books

• Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Press. 1988. ISBN 978-0313242052. OCLC 906507190.
• Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889–1985. Boston: Beacon Press. 1999. ISBN 9780807036495. OCLC 604018015.
• America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2019. ISBN 9780393651232. OCLC 1037810222.

References

External links

• Official Website
• Faculty Profile
• Testimony to House Judiciary Committee