Pamela S. Nadell is the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and director of Jewish studies at American University. Her books include America’s Jewish Women and Women Who Would Be Rabbis, a National Jewish Book Award finalist. She lives in North Bethesda, Maryland.

In America’s Jewish Women, Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the complex story of Jewish women in America — from colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Recounting how Jewish women have been at the forefront of social, economic, and political causes for centuries, Nadell shows them fighting for suffrage, labor unions, civil rights, feminism, and religious rights—shaping a distinctly Jewish American identity.