Joshua Prawer

Joshua Prawer (Hebrew: יהושע פרַ‏אוֶ‏ור‎; November 22, 1917 – April 30, 1990) was a notable Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem.

His work often attempted to portray Crusader society as a forerunner to later European colonialist expansion. He was also an important figure in Israeli higher education, was one of the founders of the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University, and was a major reformer of the Israeli education system.

Life

Prawer was born on November 10, 1917 to a prosperous Jewish merchant family in Będzin, a small city in the Polish part of Silesia. He grew up speaking Polish and German, learned Hebrew, French, and Latin at school, and after joining a Zionist group, learned Yiddish as well. He immigrated to Palestine in 1936, where he learned English, and became a student of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[3] An invitation to study at the university was one of the few legal ways for Jews to enter the British Mandate of Palestine at the time. His mother died at the outbreak of World War II, and most of his family died in the Holocaust.

Prawer found that he was unhappy with mathematics, and his father suggested he study history instead since he had always enjoyed history in high school. His professor, Richard Koebner, an Anglophile historian of imperialism, set him on the course of studying the crusader colonies in the Holy Land.[3] The close ties to Koebner were likely to have instilled in Prawer his interest in the history of settlements and colonialization. Prawer began his teaching career at the Hebrew University in 1947 and (after fighting in the 1948 siege of Jerusalem) soon rose through the faculty ranks.He became deputy dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1953–55, was made professor and chair of medieval history in 1958, was dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1962–66, and served as prorector at the university in the years 1975-78.[6] In the process, he succeeded in making the university into a "global center" for Crusade Studies, and trained many future Israeli historians in that specialty. Prawer has been described as an outstanding teacher and lecturer who combined thorough preparation with a charismatic style.[6] He was often invited to lecture abroad.

פרופ' יהושע פרַ‏אוֶ‏ור (1917 – תש"ן, 30 באפריל 1990), היסטוריון ישראלי חשוב, מגדולי חוקרי תקופת הצלבנים בארץ ישראל. חבר האקדמיה הלאומית הישראלית למדעים משנת 1960. חתן פרס ישראל במדעי הרוח לשנת תשכ"ט 1969. עסק גם בתרגומם של ספרי-מסעות של נוצרים בארץ ישראל ואף שימש כעורך ראשי של האנציקלופדיה העברית לתקופה מסוימת