Dr. Christine Hayes, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, received an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and delivered its 2025 Commencement Address. Sponsored by Mr. Alan Klein and Dr. Richard Kalmin, their statement is below.
Your outstanding contricutions to Jewish scholarship have elucidated critical areas of Jewish thought with immense originality and insight.
As Sterling Professor Emerita of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University, your scholarship on Talmudic-midrashic studies, the Hebrew Bible, and the history and literature of Judaism in late antiquity has shaped our understanding of these critical areas of Jewish thought. An acknowledged ohevet Yisrael, a lover of the people of Israel, your warmth toward the Jewish community shines through in your teaching and writing.
Your books, including Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, which won the 1997 Salo Baron Prize; Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities, a 2003 National Jewish Book Award finalist; and What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives, which received numerous honors, including the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship and the 2016 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, are widely regarded as landmark works.
A graduate of Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, you have strengthened the academic enterprise through your expert leadership as past President of the Association for Jewish Studies and co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. Your introductory book on the Hebrew Bible; your popular online Yale course, “Introduction to the Bible”; and your textbook on the emergence of Judaism have made complex, nuanced findings and cutting-edge scholarly approaches accessible to a wide audience.
You have also held faculty or visiting faculty positions at Princeton University, Tel Aviv University Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Harvard University Law School, among others. In 2023, you were honored with an honorary doctorate in Theology from Lund University, Sweden. You are an elected member of the American Academy of Jewish Research and a Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
A stalwart friend of the Jewish people in good times and challenging ones, your groundbreaking work continues to shape Jewish scholarship and will inspire students and scholars alike for generations to come.”