jehuda reinharz
President
Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History
Ph.D., Brandeis University
Jehuda Reinharz was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1944. He received his high school education in Germany and immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1961.
Reinharz earned concurrent bachelor’s degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He earned a master’s degree in medieval Jewish history from Harvard University in 1968 and a doctorate in modern Jewish history from Brandeis University in 1972.
Reinharz served as the first professor of Jewish history at the University of Michigan, from 1972 to 1982, where he established the program in Judaic studies.
In 1982, he became the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis. Two years later, he was named director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis, and eight years later founded the Jacob and Libby Goodman Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel. From 1991 to 1994, Reinharz served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. In 1994, he became the seventh president of Brandeis University.
Reinharz is the author of some 100 articles and 20 books in various languages. His book "Jew in the Modern World" is one of the most widely adopted college texts in modern Jewish history. His two-volume biography of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, has won many prizes in Israel and the United States, and his book "Zionism and the Creation of a New Society," co-authored with the late Ben Halpern, was published in 1998 and reissued in a revised paperback edition by Brandeis University Press in 2000.
In 2005, he co-edited the letters and documents relating to the life and times of Manya Shohat, a remarkable pioneer of the Second Aliyah. The following year, he co-authored, along with Yaacov Shavit, a book analyzing the relationship of Jews to Europe from the 18th century to the present. His lastest book, "Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present" (second edition), co-edited with Itamar Rabinovich, is scheduled for publication in fall 2007 by Brandeis University Press.
Reinharz is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Fairfield University in Connecticut and Ben Gurion University in Israel. In 1992, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society; in 1995, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1999, he was elected a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, he serves on a large number of boards and advisory committees.
Reinharz is married to Shulamit Reinharz, professor of sociology and director of the Women’s Studies Research Center and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis. They have two daughters, Yael and Naomi.
