Menachem Ben-Sasson
Historian, Israeli politician

Menahem Ben-Sasson (Hebrew: מנחם בן-ששון; born 7 July 1951) is an Israeli politician, historian, and former member of the Knesset for Kadima. Between 2009 and 2017 he served as the thirteenth President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, succeeding Menachem Magidor. He has since served as Chancellor of the university.
Biography
Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Ben-Sasson served in a Nahal unit in Ein Tzurim and in the artillery section during his national service in the Israel Defense Forces. He went on to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he gained a BA in History and philosophy and a PhD in the History of the Jewish People in the Islamic Lands.
Ben-Sasson lives in Jerusalem, and is married with three children. In addition to Hebrew, he speaks Arabic, English, French, and German.
Academic career
After completing his PhD in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Sasson undertook post-doctoral research as a Rothschild Fellow at the Genizah Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. He subsequently became a professor of the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University, where he also served as Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He has also taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Bar-Ilan University, and LMU Munich.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Menachem Ben-Sasson” as historian, Israeli politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as historian, Israeli politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2255438. VIAF identifies the subject as 24782400. The Library of Congress control number is n83300370. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 2009 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Menachem Ben-Sasson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.