Benjamin Z. Kedar

Benjamin Ze'ev Kedar (born 2 September 1938) is professor emeritus of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 1944–45, his family avoided deportation to Auschwitz by hiding for seven months with Slovak peasants.

He immigrated to Israel with the Youth Aliyah in 1949.

His parents arrived about two months later, and after a few months he went to live with them in Kfar Netter in the Sharon Plain.

In 1952, he completed elementary school in Even Yehuda, and in 1956 the Fifth Municipal High School in Tel Aviv.

He earned a BA in history and sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he continued to graduate studies.

Kedar wrote his MA thesis under the supervision of Joshua Prawer (1964–1965).

During the Lavon Affair, he was among the leaders of the "Student Movement for Democracy," that opposed David Ben-Gurion's purported authoritarianism.

He wrote his PhD thesis on medieval history at Yale University, under the supervision of Roberto Sabatino Lopez, submitting his dissertation in 1969.

Kedar returned to Israel in the same year and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University.

In his first book, October 1973: The Story of an Armored Battalion, Kedar describes the battles of the battalion in which he served during the Yom Kippur War as communications NCO.

The foreword to this book was written by the then division commander, later Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon.

Kedar has written numerous opinion articles in Israel's daily newspapers; most of them were collected in a booklet.

In 1976–77 he was a Humboldt Foundation research fellow at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich, in 1981–82 and again in 1997–98 a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and in 1983–84 a fellow of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.

Thus for example he compared, In his Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton University Press, 1984) the attitudes toward the Muslims that took shape in Byzantium and Western Europe as well as among Eastern Christians, and.

compared developments along Latin Europe's three fronts with the realm of Islam: Iberia, Sicily and the Frankish Levant.

In 1986, he was appointed full professor at Hebrew University.

In 1987–92, Kedar chaired of the Standing Committee on Teachers' Colleges of the Council for Higher Education in Israel.

During 1990–96, Kedar was chair of the Research Students Authority (Section of Humanities, Social Sciences, Law) of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He was president of the international Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (1995–2002), chairman of the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority (2000–12) and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2010–15).

During 1995–2002, he was president of SSCLE, whose quadrennial conferences he convened in 1987 and 1999.

In 1998–2001, he chaired the university's School of History, which he founded, and where he introduced inter alia a course in world history compulsory for all incoming history students.

By teaching this course, Yuval Noah Harari evolved into a leading proponent of Big History.

In 2000–12, Kedar chaired the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

From 2001 to 2005, Kedar was director of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies.

During 2001–7, he was chair of the Section of Humanities of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

In 2001, he founded Crusades, Journal of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE), and has co-edited it with Jonathan Riley-Smith, and later with Jonathan Phillips.

Kedar is a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (since 2005), and of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (since 2006).

During his incumbency he wrote two reports: the first discusses the future of the Humanities in Israel, and the second appraises the historical research in Israeli universities; both were published in 2007.

In 2007 he was awarded an honorary degree by Haifa University.

In 2010, Kedar was elected vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities alongside president Ruth Arnon.

Until her death in 2015, he was married to Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, professor of Art History at Tel Aviv University, a descendant of the Shertok family and granddaughter of Baruch Katinsky, one of the founders of Tel Aviv.

He has two sons (from a previous marriage), Arnon and Yarden.

Their term ended in September 2015.

Kedar's research spans different periods and cultures, with an emphasis on the European Middle Ages and the crusades.

His studies compare different civilizations, utilizing a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods.

He is 2019 The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture laureate in history

and the 2020 Israel Prize laureate in history research.

Kedar was born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia to Samuel Kraus and Lydie Jeiteles-Kraus.

Both his parents were physicians.