Tamara Cohn Eskenazi

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is The Effie Wise Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History at the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. She was the first woman hired by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion as a full-time tenure track faculty member for their rabbinical school in 1990, and became the first female tenured full professor in their rabbinical school in 1995. She was also the chief editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (Andrea Weiss was associate editor), which won the 2008 Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. In 2011 Eskenazi and the late Tikva Frymer-Kensky won the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies for The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth. On May 19, 2013, Eskenazi was ordained as a rabbi by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.