Melanie Kaye was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. Her grandparents emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. After attending graduate school in Berkeley, California, she moved to Portland, Oregon and then to New Mexico. In 1990, she served as a founding director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a progressive Jewish organization focused mostly on anti-racist work and issues of economic justice. She served on the board there from 1995 to 2004.
Both in her activism and in her writing, Kaye offered Jews new ways to think about and fight racism. She began working with the Harlem Education Project in the early 1960s Civil Rights Movement at the age of 17. She directed the Queens College Worker Education Extension Center until 2004, and currently teaches urban studies at Queens College. She has written extensively on Judaism, racism, and feminism, publishing works such as The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence, and Resistance and The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology. She co-founded Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour.
