Public lifeרות הכהן-פינצ'ובר

Ruth HaCohen Pinczower

Ruth HaCohen Pinczower is an Israeli musicologist and cultural historian who holds the Artur Rubinstein Chair of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

born 1956Musicology and cultural history researchArtur Rubinstein Chair of MusicologyThe 2022 Rothschild Prize

Born: 7 December 1956, Jerusalem
Occupation: musicologist
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ruth HaCohen Pinczower was born in 1956 in Jerusalem

Ruth HaCohen was born in Jerusalem in 1956 and grew up there. Her parents, Esther and Eliezer Pinczower, came to Palestine from Germany in the 1930s.

She served in the IDF in the Nahal. She studied musicology and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University, graduating in 1980, and earned her PhD there in 1992 under Ruth Katz.

Her whole academic career has been at the Hebrew University, where she became a full professor in 2013. She headed the musicology department, the School for the Arts and the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, and helped found a PhD honors program in the humanities. She also worked as a visiting scholar in Oxford, Berlin, Princeton and elsewhere.

Her research looks at how music in the West shaped and reflected cultural, religious and political life from early modern times to today. She served on the boards of the National Library of Israel, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

She was married to Yaron Ezrahi until his death in 2019. She won the Rothschild Prize in 2022 and was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2026.