Michele Bitton was born in Morocco in 1947. She received her B.A. degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a doctorate in sociology at the University of Provence, with a thesis on the Jewish myth of Lilith. Author of several works on women and Judaism, she received the 2002 Hadassah-Brandeis International Research Institute on Jewish Women prize in the Biography category for Présences féminines juives en France XIXe–XXe siècles, a dictionary recording the activities of one hundred Jewish women who left their mark on French society.