Scienceמרדכי אלטשולר

Mordechai Altshuler

Mordechai Altshuler was an Israeli historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who studied the demography, history and culture of Soviet Jews.

1932 to 2019Research on Soviet JewryHistory of the Mountain JewsStudies of the YevsektsiyaThe Bialik Prize

Born: 25 October 1932, Suwałki
Died: 18 July 2019, Jerusalem
Occupation: historian
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Mordechai Altshuler was born in 1932 in Suwałki

Altshuler was born in 1932 in Suwałki, Poland, to a Jewish family. His grandfather Eliezer Mordechai Altshuler was active in the Hovevei Zion movement. In 1939 the family was exiled to the northern Soviet Union, and they later wandered to Central Asia and the Urals, so his schooling was irregular.

In 1946 the family returned to Poland and settled in Wrocław, where he attended a Jewish school and joined a Zionist youth movement. He reached Israel in January 1950 with Youth Aliyah and lived at Kibbutz Na'an. From 1951 to 1953 he served in the IDF.

He studied general history and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1962 and a master's degree in Jewish history in 1964. He received his doctorate in 1972 for a study of the Yevsektsiya and began teaching there.

He headed the Institute of Contemporary Jewry from 1982 to 1985 and the Center for the Study and Documentation of East European Jewry from 1988 to 2001. He became a full professor in 1986 and edited academic journals. He also did research at Columbia, Oxford and Harvard and worked in former Soviet archives.

He retired in 2002 and continued as professor emeritus. He was married to Yona Shiber and they had 2 children. He died in Jerusalem in 2019.