Meet the president
The speaker at the monthly Honours Club meeting of The Australian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will be the university’s president who is visiting Sydney this week.
Menahem Ben-Sasson
Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson is the thirteenth President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He will be completing his second four-year term in office shortly and taking on the role of its Chancellor.
Prior to serving as President, Prof. Ben-Sasson was a member of the Israeli Knesset, where he served as Chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice committee, and headed the Knesset lobby for higher education.
Prof. Ben-Sasson is a scholar in the Department of the History of the Jewish People, a historian of the heritage of Jews in Muslim lands and has written some forty books and scholarly articles on a range of subjects, including Jewish communities in Muslim lands; law and spirituality as sources of authority in medieval oriental society and the relationship between religion and economics.
After earning a PhD in Jewish History at the Hebrew University, Prof Ben-Sasson completed his post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. He later served as Hebrew University Rector and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
Prof. Ben-Sasson is a past editor and editorial board member of a range of scholarly publications. He has served as President of the World Union of Jewish Studies, Vice-President of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Chairman of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the east, and on the Board of Directors at Yad Vashem.
Prof. Ben-Sasson’s honours include an Honorary Doctoral degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Prize for Jewish History, and the Feher Prize for the Study of Jewish Heritage.
Prof. Ben-Sasson lives in Jerusalem and speaks Hebrew, Arabic, English, French and German and is married and has three children and six grandchildren.
As the President of one of the largest employers in Jerusalem and its only University, there are few people better placed to be an authoritative speaker on Jerusalem: its past, present and future, than Professor Menahem Ben-Sasson.
The Honours Club will meet at the Rose Bay RSL, corner of Vickery Avenue and New South Head Rd.
$15pp Refreshments provided Inquiries: 9389 2825
