Alice Shalvi

Alice Shalvi was born in 1926 in Essen

Alice Margulies was born in Essen, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family of religious Zionists, Benzion and Perl Margulies. After the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the family moved to London in 1934. During World War 2 they lived in Waddesdon.

From 1944 she studied English literature at Cambridge, where she was active in the Jewish student society. In 1946 she represented Jewish students at the Zionist Congress in Basel. She also studied social work at the London School of Economics.

In 1949 she immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem, where she taught English at the Hebrew University. In 1950 she married Moshe Shalvi, and they had 6 children. In 1969 she founded the English department at Ben-Gurion University and headed it.

In 1975 she took charge of Pelech, a religious high school for girls in Jerusalem, which taught Talmud and ran on democratic education ideas. In 1984 she founded the Israel Women's Network. She also worked for separation of religion and state, human rights and Jewish Arab dialogue.

From 1997 she served as rector of the Schechter Institute. In 2018 she published her memoir Never a Native. She died on 2 October 2023.