Aryeh Kasher

Aryeh Kasher was born in 1935 in Central District

Kasher was born in 1935, the son of Yosef and Mania Kasher. He grew up in Kfar Vitkin and went to elementary and high school there. As a youth he wrote the rhymed radio feuilleton "Hilik Haviv" with his classmates Gad Yaacobi and Micha Gisser.

He served in the Nahal and in Gadna, and helped in new immigrant villages in the Negev. In the early 1960s he began teaching history at the Emek Hefer regional school.

He studied at Tel Aviv University and completed his MA thesis in 1966. In 1973 he received his PhD in Jewish studies, with a dissertation on the legal and political status of the Jews of Egypt in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. His advisor was Shimon Applebaum.

Kasher taught Jewish history at Tel Aviv University for many years and headed its Center for the Study of the Land of Israel and its Settlement. He was a visiting scholar at Oxford and a visiting professor in Cincinnati and Memphis. His books dealt with the Idumeans, the Nabataeans, the Hellenistic cities and King Herod.

He retired in 2005. He was married to Tamar, an artist, and had 3 daughters, among them the writer Orna Yakir. He died on October 26, 2011, and was buried in Tzur Moshe.