Literatureחביבה פדיה

Haviva Pedaya

Haviva Pedaya is an Israeli poet, writer and scholar of Kabbalah and Hasidism, and a professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University.

born 1957Research on Kabbalah and HasidismHebrew poetry and prosePromoting Sephardi and Mizrahi studies

Born: 5 December 1957, Jerusalem
Occupation: poet, activist, writer, university teacher
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Haviva Pedaya was born in 1957 in Jerusalem

Pedaya was born in Jerusalem in 1957 as Haviva Ovadia, to Simha and Eliyahu Ovadia. Her parents came to Israel from Baghdad in the 1950s. She is the great granddaughter of the Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Fatiyah, and she later took the family name of her grandfather, Shaul Fatiyah.

She studied Kabbalah and Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University and went on to a PhD in Jewish philosophy. In 1991 she completed her studies at the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem. Her dissertation became a book on Rabbi Yitzhak Sagi Nahor, published in 2001.

She began teaching at Ben-Gurion University in 1987 and became a full professor in 2002. From 2009 to 2024 she headed the Elyachar Center for Studies in Sephardi Heritage. Her research covers early Kabbalah in Provence, Nachmanides, ecstasy and mysticism, and the Hasidic movement.

In 2016 she joined the Council for Higher Education, where she led an effort to recognize Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish studies as an independent field. The council recognized the field in 2022. She also writes poetry and prose, and lives in Beersheba with her husband, David Sorotzkin, and their daughter.