Nehemia Levtzion

Nehemia Levtzion was born in 1935 in Be'er Tuvia

Levtzion was born in 1935 in the moshav of Be'er Tuvia. His parents, Pnina and Aron Lubetski, later changed the family name to Levtzion. He had an older sister named Hanna.

He served in the army in the Nahal and then joined Kibbutz Ma'ayan Baruch. From 1957 to 1962 he studied Arabic language and literature and Middle East history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his doctorate in African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, finishing in 1965.

From 1965 he taught African and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University, where he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1978 to 1981. He headed the Ben-Zvi Institute from 1982 to 1987 and was the third President of the Open University from 1987 to 1992. He then led the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute from 1994 to 1997 and chaired the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education from 1997 to 2003.

He published many studies on Islam, especially Islam in Africa, and lived for a time in Ghana for his research. He was married to Tirtza, a teacher. He died in 2003, and in 2004 a center for Islamic studies at the Hebrew University was named after him.