Benjamin Kedar

Benjamin Ze'ev Kedar (born 2 September 1938)Who's Who in Israel 2001 (Tel Aviv, 2002), p. 214: "KEDAR, Benjamin Z. is professor emeritus of History at 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).
He is 2019 The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture laureate in history

and the 2020 Israel Prize laureate in history research.

Biography

Kedar was born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia to Dr Samuel Kraus and Dr Lydie Jeiteles-Kraus. Both his parents were physicians. 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.In laudem hierosolymitani. ''Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar'', ed. Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum and Jonathan Riley-Smith. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007. 468 introduction, p. x. 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 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. In 1986, he was appointed full professor at Hebrew University.
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.

Activities within the Hebrew University

During 1990–96, Kedar was chair of the Research Students Authority (Section of Humanities, Social Sciences, Law) of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1998–2001, he chaired the university's School of History, which he founded,Diego Olstein, Thinking History Globally (New York, 2015), p. xiv.; Also in the introduction to In Laudem Hierosolymitani, p. xi. 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. From 2001 to 2005, Kedar was director of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies.Benjamin Z. Kedar is given the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa
Haifa University site.

Activities outside the Hebrew University

In 1987–92, Kedar chaired of the Standing Committee on Teachers' Colleges of the Council for Higher Education in Israel. During 2001–7, he was chair of the Section of Humanities of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
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 2000–12, Kedar chaired the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Kedar is a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (since 2005), and of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (since 2006). 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. During 1995–2002, he was president of SSCLE, whose quadrennial conferences he convened in 1987 and 1999. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary degree by Haifa 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 2010, Kedar was elected vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities alongside president Ruth Arnon. Their term ended in September 2015.

Research

Comparative history

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. 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. Other comparative studies deal with medieval cartography in Korea, China, the Muslim world, Western Europe as well as in pre-Columbian America; with Muslim, Byzantine and Frankish hospitals; with legislation in the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem and in Byzantium; and the comparative dimensions of medieval pilgrimage. Kedar's interest in the theoretical aspects of this sub-discipline led him to study outlines for comparative history set forth from the late 19th century onward.

Economic depression and merchant mentality

Kedar's first major research, based on his PhD dissertation, was published in 1976 by Yale University Press; an expanded version was translated into Italian. It examines the impact of the 14th century economic depression on the mentality of Genoese and Venetian merchants and reveals that the depression entailed a shrinkage of horizons, a decrease in daring, and a growing quest for security. The idea of insurance arose during this period, the geographical range of activity diminished and, instead of advancing to new regions, commerce was now largely limited to the long-known Mediterranean and Black Seas. Kedar concluded that "the successful exploits in the late 13th century drove some erchantsto attempt the objectively unfeasible, whereas the setbacks in the mid-14th century made even the objectively feasible seem too hazardous to try." In later years, Kedar made various contributions to the history of Genoa, from drawing attention to a new Arabic source on the Muslim attack on Genoa in 934 to a study of the Genoese notariate in 1382.

The study of personal names

Kedar is one of the pioneers of the study of medieval personal names. In his first article as well as in the above-mentioned book on the Genoese and Venetian merchants he studied changes in naming fashions through the analysis of long lists of citizens that had been compiled at different dates. He argued that while most medieval people did not leave a direct testimony regarding their mentality, it is possible to approximate it via the names they chose to give their children. That is, the child's personal name serves as an indirect indicator of some facet of the parent's mentality. Consequently, a change in name-giving fashion may be taken as an indication of a shift in group mentality. An article written with his student Muhammad al-Hajjuj, deals with a list of Muslim villagers from the Nablus area, who fled from Frankish rule to Muslim Damascus in the middle of the 12th century. Analysis of this list allowed for the reconstruction of family size and revealed the distribution of personal names. Comparison with the names of children born in the same area in the years 1905–25 revealed a remarkable similarity of the most common names given in the mid-12th to those given in the early 20th century.

The crusades

A large part of Kedar's studies deals with the crusades and the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, established in the wake of the First Crusade. In these studies he exhibits "an ability to change thinking through a rigorous and imaginative treatment of source-material that has often been ignored by others" and to "peel away unfounded assumptions and unwarranted traditions of historical orthodoxy." Topically, he has discussed the relationship of crusading and conversion; demography; intellectual, ecclesiastical