Yaron Tsur

Yaron Tsur was born in 1948 in Jerusalem

Yaron Tsur was born in Jerusalem in 1948 to a father of German Jewish origin and a mother of Yemenite origin. As a child he lived with his parents in his Yemenite grandfather's home in the Nahlat Ahim neighborhood, on the edge of Rehavia. He later wrote that this setting shaped his mixed Ashkenazi and Mizrahi identity and his path as a historian.

He studied music at the Jerusalem Conservatory and then at the Rubin Academy of Music. He served in the army as an intelligence officer. Afterward he wrote radio plays for the youth department of Kol Yisrael and was a central activist in Peace Now.

He earned all three of his degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His master's thesis dealt with anti-Jewish incidents in Tunisia during World War I. His doctorate, supervised by Prof. Pesach Shinar, studied French policy toward Tunisian Jews in the move from Muslim to colonial rule.

In 1975 he joined the Open University, where he co-wrote its first Jewish history course and led the team of a modern Jewish history course. From 1990 he taught at Tel Aviv University, chaired its Jewish history department in 2007 and headed its school of Jewish studies. He founded the Historical Jewish Press website and is active in digital humanities.

He won the Shazar Prize in 2002 for his book Torn Community and the Israel Prize in 2025. He is married to Nadine Kuperty-Tsur and has 2 sons from a previous marriage.