Anshel Pfeffer

Anshel Pfeffer was born in 1973 in Manchester

Pfeffer was born in 1973 in Manchester to a Jewish family. He was the eldest of 6 children of David, a furniture importer, and Miriam, a medical secretary. In 1981 the family moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem.

He studied at schools of the Horev network in Jerusalem. After serving in Golani, he studied teaching and the rabbinate at the Maale Adumim yeshiva but did not complete ordination. For a year he taught Bible and Talmud at the Moriah science high school.

He began as a reporter on Haredi affairs for the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha'ir and became its editor in 2002. He later worked at Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, Makor Rishon and Israeli. In 2009 he became Haaretz's military correspondent and later covered events abroad, including the 2011 unrest in Egypt.

Since 2007 he has written the weekly column Jerusalem & Babylon on Diaspora Jewry, which earned a B'nai B'rith award in 2010. In 2018 he published a biography of Benjamin Netanyahu. His views on the Gaza war drew criticism, and in 2025 a poet withdrew from the Edinburgh book festival over his invitation.