Through both her scholarship, Ellen Umansky has reshaped our understanding of the influence women have had on centuries of Jewish practice. Umansky graduated from Wellesley College in 1972, then earned a master’s degree in religion from Yale Divinity School in 1974 and a PhD in Judaic studies from Columbia University in 1981. She published two books on Lily Montagu, an important early figure in Progressive (Reform) Judaism, before coediting Four Centuries of Jewish Women’s Spirituality: A Sourcebook with Dianne Ashton in 2004. In 1994 she became both a professor of Judaic studies and director of the Carl and Dorothy Bennet Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut, where she still teaches as of 2017. She has also served on the board of Theta Alpha Kappa, the national honors society for religious studies; the editorial board of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; and the academic advisory board of the Jewish Women’s Archive.