Moshe Salai

Moshe Salai was born in 1952 in Haifa

Moshe Salai was born in Haifa and grew up in the Ramot Remez neighborhood. His mother was a kindergarten teacher, and his father Zeev served in the IDF and reached the rank of colonel. He finished the Hebrew Reali School in 1970 and was a youth movement counselor.

He studied medicine at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University from 1970 to 1977 through the academic reserve program. In 1974 he married Irit Salai-Tauber.

He served as a combat doctor in the Golani Brigade and later as a division and corps medical officer. He took part in the First Lebanon War and the Second Lebanon War, and reached the rank of colonel in the reserves.

He trained in orthopedic surgery at Sheba Medical Center and in 1988 founded the national bone bank. He headed the orthopedic department at Rabin Medical Center from 2002 to 2010 and the orthopedic division at Tel Aviv Medical Center from 2010 to 2020. He published over 150 papers and was president of the European tissue banking association.

He became a full professor at Tel Aviv University in 2015 and at Ariel University in 2020. He died on March 26, 2026, after an illness.