Christine Hayes

Hayes was born to two non-Jewish Australian parents living in the United States. Hayes has described her parents as "very interested in the world," and has cited this interest in the humanities as a great inspiration in studying rabbinic text when she attended Harvard. According to Hayes, the family moved frequently in her early years before her parents chose to return to Australia, bringing their 11-year-old daughter back with them.[2]

Upon finishing high school, Hayes returned to the United States to study at Harvard University. There, Hayes relates that she stumbled into the Harvard University Hillel and began to teach herself to read Hebrew. She would expand her Hebrew in graduate school where she studied for eight months on an Israeli Kibbutz.[2]

Hayes attended Harvard University and received her B.A. summa cum laude in the Study of Religion in 1984. She continued her education at the University of California, Berkeley, earning first an M.A. in 1988, and her PhD in 1993.[3] Her PhD dissertation, "Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic difference in selected Sugyot from tractate Avodah Zarah" sought to compare textual differences—and halakhic conclusions—between the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. The dissertation attracted the attention of provocative scholar Jacob Neusner, who entitled his book, Are the Talmuds Interchangeable? Christine Hayes's Blunder (1995) after Hayes.[4]

Hayes' scholarship seeks to critically examine Bible and Rabbinic literature to determine how cultural interactions between early Jews influenced their own perceptions of self.[5] Along with being the subject of many of her writings, Hayes also teaches courses on Bible and Rabbinic critique as a faculty member and senior research fellow at Yale and the Shalom Harman Institute.[3]

In Hayes' 2015 book, What's Divine about Divine Law, Hayes examines the development of rabbinical law, termed halacha, and the law of Biblical Scripture, termed divine law. Hayes draws a distinction between the two based on their point of origin; where divine law given by God, halacha became the law as articulated by learned men.[6] In establishing this distinction within Jewish thought, Hayes seeks to understand Rabbinic Judaism in-line with the Stoicism of Greek and Roman philosophies. In essence, Hayes understands Rabbinic Judaism to turn away from the dogma of Ancient Judaism in light of the influence of Greco-Roman philosophy emphasizing reason.[6] Hayes also places rabbinic and divine law in the context of modern legal theories, drawing upon the research she conducted at the Yale Law School after receiving a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2003.[7][8] The fellowship, which is awarded to scholars seeking to complete interdisciplinary research, allowed Hayes to audit courses and participate in legal theory workshops at the Yale Law School. In the foreword to What's Divine about Divine Law, she credits the fellowship with "benefitting her enormously" in the production of the work.[9]

In 2006, her Introduction to Hebrew Bible course was selected by Yale as a pilot for the university's Open Courses online platform allowing anyone around the world to access course materials and recordings of the lectures.[10]

Where Hayes has published numerous books and publications, she has also sought to dedicate time to institutions supporting Jewish Studies research and scholarship. From 2012 to 2016, Hayes served as the co-editor of the Association of Jewish Studies Review. In 2017, she was elected president of the Association for Jewish Studies.[11]