Article: Share this story with your kids of this remarkable woman. Last week, Malka Schaps became the first ultra-Orthodox woman in the world to be appointed dean at a major university, Bar Ilan. Until now, she has served as Bar Ilan's financial mathematics program head. Schaps is 65 years old and the grandmother of 17. Her story is remarkable.
Malka Schaps was born Mary Kramer, to a non-Jewish, non-religious Protestant home in Cleveland Ohio. Her father, a professor of American history, pushed her to excel academically. When she was 19 and in college at Swarthmore, she converted to Orthodox Judaism. She was inspired by her time as a foreign exchange student in Germany and her studies of the Holocaust. She met her husband, David, at college and they both did their graduate studies at Harvard. He is now a professor at Bar Ilan in the classics. They made aliyah in 1972. They live in Bnai Brak, where Schaps said most of the women have no idea of her career or would even be able to understand the type of math she does. She is the author of more than 50 academic papers, a globetrotting lecturer, and bestselling author (under the name Rachel Pomerantz) targeting Orthodox readers. They have two children and have fostered four other children. She encouraged her boys to serve in the Israeli army. She says that she does a lot of work by email, to accommodate her roles as mother and grandmother.
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Here's her books: http://www.amazon.com/Bells-and-Pomegranates-ebook/dp/B0093B7MA8/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381860339&sr=1- and http://www.amazon.com/Mountains-Around-Jerusalem-Rachel-Pomerantz/dp/1583303510/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381860339&sr=1-2
