Nadell's scholarship focuses on American Jewish history, especially the history of American Jewish women. In 1995, she was guest editor of an issue of American Jewish History devoted to research about women. She subsequently edited volumes including Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives, and American Jewish Women's History: A Reader, and authored others, including Women Who Would be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination and America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today. Her work brings to the fore Jewish women previously ignored in most history books. She highlights the roles women have played in changing historically set precedents. In doing so she has publicized the names of the first women to push against the established male-only rabbinates of the United States, tracing the origins of that debate in the late 19th century to an 1889 short story in the Jewish Exponent, "A Problem for Purim," by the journalist Mary M. Cohen, a member of the historic Philadelphia synagogue, Congregation Mikveh Israel. Dedicating her work to advancing the scholarship laid down by historians of women's history, Nadell has ventured to explore the means in which women traditionally shut out of religious spaces continue to assert influence within and outside the religious domain. In America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, religion becomes only one of the diverse commitments and activities of Jewish women. In this groundbreaking history, Nadell shows two threads binding the nation's Jewish women: a powerful sense of self and a deep commitment to making the world a better place. Informed by the shared values of America's founding and Jewish identity, Nadell highlights Jewish women's activism in the history of the nation they came to call home, from the 18th to the 20th century. She writes about the colonial era matriarch Grace Nathan and Nathan's great-granddaughter poet Emma Lazarus, about labor organizer Bessie Hillman, and about Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg. She discusses Jewish women's activism in the labor, birth control, suffrage, civil rights, and feminist movements. She also discusses sexual assaults of sweatshop workers during the mid-20th century, as well as the hardships many women would endure as agunot, women whose husbands cannot or will not grant them a religious divorce who can never remarry under Jewish law.
Role in public life
Nadell has shared her knowledge of Jewish women in America with the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, including the stories of success highlighted in the "Only In America" gallery. After being elected in 2014, Nadell served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies from 2015 to 2017. While president, Nadell wrote an open letter to Hungarian President Zoltán Balog in opposition of the controversial amendments being made to the National Higher Education Law. The amendment would increase obstacles to universities operating outside European Union countries with sister-schools inside the EU. In her letter, Nadell expressed concern that such obstacles would encumber scholarship coming out of the Budapest-based Central European University. Nadell penned another letter as president, along with the Association for Jewish Studies executive board to Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer expressing concern over amendments made to the Israeli Entry into Israel Law. The law would prohibit the issuing of visas to foreign nationals who have made "public calls for boycotting Israel." For Nadell, who herself identifies as a free-speech advocate, an attempt to suppress the speech of others would be seen as a deep concern. Nadell voiced similar free-speech concerns in 2017 before the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The hearing would come as Members of Congress debated adding language to a proposed bill defining antisemitismas language which would "demonize, delegitimize, or apply a double standard to Israel." In her testimony, Nadell alleged that such a definition would only limit free speech, and stated that Jewish students "feel safe on campus" without restrictions.
