Talya Fishman

Talya Fishman (born April 30, 1955) is an American scholar of Jewish studies. A 2004 Guggenheim Fellow, she specializes in Judaism in Christian and Muslim societies up until the 18th century, and she is author of Shaking the Pillars of Exile and Becoming the People of the Talmud (2011). She is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She obtained her BA from Wesleyan University in 1976, her MA from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1979, and her PhD from Harvard University in 1986.

Fishman became an instructor in religion at Boston University in 1984 and was promoted to assistant professor in 1986, before leaving in 1988 to become a visiting assistant professor at Columbia University during the spring 1989 semester. In 2004, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for "a study of the inscription of Oral Torah and the formation of Jewish culture in the Middle Ages". She has also taught courses on Jewish literature, law, mysticism, and politics. She has written for the Jewish Review of Books.

Fishman has two children with his husband, writer Max Apple, as well as two stepchildren from Apple's previous marriage (including Sam Apple). One of her daughters suffered from cerebral palsy. Works Shaking the Pillars of Exile: 'Voice of a Fool,' an Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture (1997) Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (2011)