Ruth Calderon

Ruth Calderon was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv

Ruth Calderon was born in Tel Aviv in 1961. Her father was a Sephardic immigrant from Bulgaria and her mother was an Ashkenazi Jew from Germany. She attended public schools.

She earned a bachelor's degree at Oranim College and went on to study Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed her doctorate there in 2007, applying structuralist tools to Talmudic legends. She also studied at the Hartman Institute and in the Mandel leadership school.

In 1989 she founded the Elul study house together with Motti Bar-Or, open to women and men, religious and secular. She then founded Alma, a center for Hebrew culture in Tel Aviv, and later branches in Haifa and New York. She hosted a Channel 2 program on Jewish texts and in 2012 became head of culture and education at the National Library.

She was elected to the Knesset in 2013 on the Yesh Atid list and served as a deputy speaker. Her first Knesset speech drew wide attention online. She lost her seat in the 2015 elections.

Yair Lapid later nominated her to head a major Zionist organization, but Doron Almog was chosen for the post. She is a mother of 3 and lives in Tel Aviv.