Anita Shapira

Anita Shapira was born in 1940 in Warsaw

Shapira was born in Warsaw in 1940. After her biological parents died in the Holocaust, she was adopted by a couple, and the family left Poland after the Kielce pogrom. They reached the country in 1947 on a ship of illegal immigrants and settled in Tel Aviv.

She studied general and Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, finishing her first degree in 1964 and her master's in 1968. She earned her doctorate in 1974 under Professor Daniel Carpi, with a dissertation on the struggle for Hebrew labor from 1929 to 1939.

She became a full professor at Tel Aviv University in 1985 and was dean of its Faculty of Humanities from 1990 to 1995. She founded the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies and led it from 1996 to 1999. From 2000 to 2012 she headed the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel.

Her research covers the history of the Yishuv and Israel, including Labor Zionism, the use of force and collective memory. She wrote biographies of Berl Katznelson, Yigal Allon, Yosef Haim Brenner and David Ben-Gurion. In 2013 she deposited her personal archive at the National Library, and since 2020 she has been a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.