Menachem Ben-Sasson

Menachem Ben-Sasson was born in 1951 in Jerusalem

Ben-Sasson was born in Jerusalem on 7 July 1951. His father, Yona Ben-Sasson, taught Jewish philosophy and headed a department at the Ministry of Education. He grew up in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood and studied at the Dugma school and the Bnei Akiva yeshiva Netiv Meir.

He served in the IDF in a Nahal group at Kibbutz Ein Tzurim and in the Artillery Corps. He then studied history and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a PhD in the history of the Jews in Islamic lands. In 1983 he received a Rothschild Fellowship and did postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge.

He became a professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University and studied medieval Jewry in Muslim lands, Maimonides and the Cairo Genizah. He was rector of the university from 1997 to 2001 and headed the Ben-Zvi Institute from 2004 to 2006.

In 2006 he entered the Knesset for Kadima and chaired the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. He also led a parliamentary inquiry committee on wiretapping. He left the Knesset in 2009.

He was President of the Hebrew University from 2009 to 2017 and became its chancellor in 2017. In 2012 he was elected chairman of the council of Israeli university heads. He lives in Jerusalem, is married to Ada Ben-Sasson and has 3 children.