Sergio DellaPergola

Sergio DellaPergola was born in 1942 in Trieste

DellaPergola was born to a Jewish family in Trieste in 1942. His father, Massimo, was a sports journalist, and his grandfather was Rabbi Raffaele DellaPergola. After World War II the family settled in Milan, where he was active in Jewish youth movements and student groups.

He earned an MA in political science at the University of Pavia. He moved to Israel in 1966 and settled in Jerusalem. In 1973 he received a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is professor emeritus at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University, which he once headed, and held the Shlomo Argov Chair in Israel-Diaspora Relations. His research covers Jewish historical demography, the family, migration and population projections. He has advised the President of Israel, the government and the Jerusalem Municipality.

He was a visiting professor at Oxford, Brandeis, the University of Illinois at Chicago and UCLA, and sits on the Yad Vashem committee for the Righteous Among the Nations. He is married to Miriam, daughter of Rabbi Elio Toaff, and they have 4 children. The family lives in Beit HaKerem in Jerusalem.