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Mordechai Rotenberg

Mordechai Rotenberg is an Israeli sociologist and psychologist, a professor of social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem known for developing a Jewish approach to psychology.

born 1932Jewish dialogical psychologyThe re-biography therapeutic approachIsrael Prize for social work

Occupation: psychologist, sociologist, social worker, university teacher
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, New York University, University of California, Berkeley

Mordechai Rotenberg was born in 1932 in Wrocław

Rotenberg was born in April 1932 in Breslau, Germany, today Wrocław in Poland. His family descended from Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, founder of the Gur Hasidic movement, and his father owned a publishing house. In 1939 the family moved to the Land of Israel, where his father opened a small printing press in Jerusalem and Rotenberg grew up in a Haredi home.

During the War of Independence he fought in the battle at Notre Dame in Jerusalem and later helped build the Burma Road. In 1950 he began serving as a fighter in the Nahal, in Unit 101.

He studied social work, sociology and education at the Hebrew University, graduating in 1960. He earned a master's degree from New York University in 1962 and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969. Along the way he worked as a social worker, a youth probation officer and a supervisor of closed institutions for young offenders.

In 1970 he joined the Hebrew University faculty and became a full professor in 1980. From the 1970s he developed a Jewish dialogical psychology drawing on Hasidic, Kabbalistic and Midrashic ideas, and wrote 10 books. In 2006 he founded the Rotenberg Institute for Jewish Psychology with his daughter and a student, and in 2009 he received the Israel Prize.

He is married to Naomi, a nurse, and they had 4 children. Their youngest son was killed as a soldier in 1988.