Dorit Shavit

Dorit Shavit was born in 1949 in Jerusalem

Dorit Shavit was born in Jerusalem in 1949 to parents who came from Germany. Her mother arrived in 1922 with her family, and her father came in 1936 to work on a kibbutz. As a child she moved with her family to the Maoz Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv, where she attended Tichon Hadash and joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.

She served in the IDF in Unit 8200. In 1973 she completed a bachelor's degree in Arabic literature and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1988 she earned a master's degree in Christian studies there.

After the Yom Kippur War and the Agranat Commission's recommendations, she was recruited to the Foreign Ministry for her knowledge of Arab culture, starting in 1974 as a researcher. She later served as deputy consul general in Miami, political adviser in Cairo, and consul general in São Paulo from 1994 to 1999. In 2003 she became deputy director general and head of the Latin America and Caribbean division.

From 2011 she was Israel's ambassador to Argentina until she retired in 2016. She also served as non-resident ambassador to Paraguay until Israel opened an embassy there in 2015. She was widowed in 2003, remarried, and is a mother of 4.