Paula E. Hyman (1946–2011)

Paula E. Hyman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother Ida and father Sydney Hyman both had immigrant Jewish parents. She attended Radcliffe College, where she graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude in 1968. She learned Hebrew and studied classic Jewish texts at Hebrew College while going to high school and college. She went on to Columbia University in New York City for postgraduate work in history and completed her Ph.D. in 1975 with a dissertation on the Jews in France after the Dreyfus Affair. It was published in 1979 under the title From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (1979), and gained her recognition among modern Jewish historians. From Dreyfus to Vichy was widely acclaimed and one of the finalists for the annual National Jewish Book Award in history. French Jewry and Jewish feminism were to remain the focus of her research interests for decades. She also was deeply engaged in the feminist movement and while still a graduate student, joined with colleagues Charlotte Baum and Sonya Michel to publish a pioneering work on The Jewish Woman in America (1976). After serving as assistant professor of history at Columbia University from 1974 to 1981, she became dean of the Seminary College of Jewish Studies, the first woman to hold that position, and associate professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1986, she was appointed the Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University, where she served for over a decade as chair of Jewish Studies. Other publications included The Emancipation of the Jews of Alsace: Acculturation and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (1991) and The Jews of Modern France (1998). Prof. Hyman published the memoirs of Puah Rakovsky, called My Life as a Radical Jewish Woman: Memoirs of a Zionist Feminist in Poland (2002). She worked with ChaeRan Y. Freeze and Antony Polonsky to produce a volume of essays devoted to Jewish Women in Eastern Europe (2005). In recognition of her contribution to Jewish scholarship and her leadership role, in 2004 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Historical Studies from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and was elected President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, the first woman to serve in that capacity. She was an active member of various editorial boards of leading research journals. With Deborah Dash Moore, Prof. Hyman edited Indiana University Press’s series on The Modern Jewish Experience for more than two decades. She was married to Dr. Stanley Rosenbaum, with whom she had two daughters.