Participants (in Alphabetic order)
Liat Ayalon is a Professor in the School of Social Work, at Bar Ilan University, Israel. Prof. Ayalon served as the Israeli PI of the EU funded MascAge program to study ageing masculinities in literature and cinema. In addition, she was the coordinator of an international EU funded Ph.D. program on the topic of ageism (EuroAgeism.eu; 2017-2022). Between 2014 and 2018, Prof. Ayalon has led an international research network on the topic of ageism, funded through COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology; COST IS1402, notoageism.com). She consults both national and international organizations concerning the development and evaluation of programs and services for older adults. In recognition of her work, Prof. Ayalon was selected by the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing as one of 50 world leaders working to transform the world to be a better place in which to grow older.
Angelika Berlejung studied Theology, Assyriology and Semitic Languages in Heidelberg and Munich (1980-88), received a diploma in Theology from the University of Heidelberg (1988) and a doctorate degree in Theology (Old Testament Studies) at Heidelberg (1997; scl). Her PhD won the Ruprecht-Karls-Award (1998). In 1999-2004 she held the chair of “Languages and Cultures of Syria and Palestine” at the University of Leuven/Belgium. Since 2004 she holds the chair of “History and History of Religion of Israel and its Neighbors” at the University of Leipzig/Germany.
Since 2009 she is professor extraordinaire at the Department of Ancient Studies at the University of Stellenbosch/South Africa, and since 2017 Visiting Full Professor for Biblical Archaeology at Bar Ilan University/Israel. Since 2015 she is co-director of the Minerva center for the “Research on Israel and Aram in Biblical Times”. Since 2017 she is Member (o.m.) of the Saxonian Academy of Science
Hannes Bezzel, is professor for Old Testament / Hebrew Bible Studies at the Faculty of Theology at Friedrich Schiller-University, Jena since 2015. In 2007, he published his doctoral dissertation on the so-called “Confessions of Jeremiah,” and in 2015 his Habilitationsschrift on king Saul in tradition, redaction, and reception-history. Apart from the redaction history of the Former Prophets, his research interests lie in the oracles concerning foreign nations of the Latter Prophets. With his New Testament colleague Manuel Vogel (Jena), he is currently working on a monograph on the idea of the “Kingdom of God” in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
Ziv Bohrer is a senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Law, as well as a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. His main research field is Public International Law, with an emphasis on researching both current and historical issues relating to International Humanitarian Law and to International Criminal Law. In recent years, he has been researching (among other things) the forgotten, centuries-long, pre-WW2 history of International Criminal Law. Dr. Bohrer is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Journal of the History of International Law. He received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University; his doctoral dissertation addressed the Superior Order Defense in both International and Domestic Criminal Law – an issue he continues to research, publishing a book and several academic papers on the subject.
Alexander Deeg, Prof. Dr. holds the chair of Practical Theology at Leipzig University, Germany, since 2011, specializing in homiletics and liturgical studies, Biblical hermeneutics and Jewish-Christian dialogue. He is the head of “Studium in Israel” – an association organizing a study program at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He studied Protestant Theology and Jewish Studies in Erlangen and Jerusalem, and finished his dissertation on Jewish and Christian Preaching in 2005. His second academic book deals with the theology of Christian Worship combining theological, historical, and cultural studies. Since 2019, he also researches practices of church life in the German Democratic Republic and asks for possible consequences for current practices.
Mark Freeman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), a non-governmental organisation that recently celebrated its tenth anniversary as a global peacebuilding innovator. A leading expert in political transitions and high-level peace negotiations with more than 25 years of experience, Mr Freeman is regularly consulted for advice on crisis management and conflict resolution. He has worked in countries including Ukraine, Venezuela, Colombia, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Burundi, DRC, The Gambia, El Salvador, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nepal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. Mr. Freeman is the co-author of Negotiating Transitional Justice (Cambridge, 2020), which draws upon his years as an adviser inside the Colombian peace talks in Havana. He is also the author of Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge, 2010) and Truth Commissions and Procedural Fairness (Cambridge, 2006), which received the American Society of International Law’s highest award.
Avner Gvaryahu, Co-Director of breaking the silence , was born in the Israeli city of Rehovot and raised in the religious- Zionist community. During his army service, he served in the special forces of the paratrooper’s brigade, where he attained the rank of staff sergeant. A year after he was discharged, he joined Breaking the Silence as a researcher and tour guide with a focus on working with world Jewry and later became director of the Public Outreach. SAvner holds a B.A. in Social Work from Tel Aviv University and an M.A from the Institute for the Study of Human Rights in Columbia University NY.
Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the OPT
Liv Halperin is both a Post-Doctoral Fellow on Gender, Conflict Resolution & Peace at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations (Hebrew University) and the Director of research and policy at the ECF think tank that shapes policies aiming at advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Liv’s academic research focuses on the role of gender and of emotions in nonviolent resistance, social movements and peace activism. She previously worked for the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross and various NGOs in Peru, Mozambique, Angola, Haiti, Colombia, Israel/Palestine, the USA and Switzerland. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva/Switzerland), a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Boston/USA) and a PHD from Ben Gurion University.
Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar is an associate prof. and teaches at the Law School at the University of Haifa. He holds a Doctorate in Law from Harvard Law School. Was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School as well as a a visiting associate professor at the Frankel Institute for Judaic studies in the University of Michigan. His research focuses on law and society, legal geography, legal history, and land regimes in settler societies. Among his recent publications alone or with co-authors: “Dignity Takings and Dispossession in Israel” Law and Social Inquiry (2016); “Between Rights and Denials: Bedouin Indigeneity in the Negev/Naqab,” Environment and Planning A, (2016); “Inconvenient Truth – the Dead Negev Doctrine and Dispossession of the Bedouin”43 Iyunei Mishpat (2021);“Power, Law, and Place in the Shadow of the Occupation: A Legal-Geographical Examination of the Transformation of the Susiya Area (Shafa Yatta شفا يطّا) University of Haifa Law review(2022); Squaring the circle: Settler colonialism, the international law of occupation and the separation barrier” Political Geography, (2023); “Reorientating Comparative Law by Engaging it with Critical Legal Geography” forthcoming in Legalities.
He is the co-editor of The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (Stanford University Press, 2014) and co-author of Emptied Lands: A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev, (Stanford University Press, 2018.)
Kedar has been awarded numerous research grants including an Israeli Science Foundation research grant for the period of 2019-2023 on The Land Regime of the Territories Occupied by Israel: A Legal Geography of The West Bank, 1967-2017 and is working on a book and several articles on this subject.
Rassem Khamaisi is a full professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. He is an urban and regional planner and geographer. A strong focus of his efforts is aimed towards alternative and counter urban planning, urban geography, and water management, besides concentration on public administration, public participation, local government and urban management. He is a member of various professional international and local associations and NGO’s involved in public and environmental policy issues, planning and development. Khamaisi was elected in 2007 as President of the Israeli Geographical Association. He is the manager of a private company (Center for Planning and Studies), which engages in urban and strategy planning and management. Khamaisi has received the “Yakir haTichnun.” decoration for the year 2012– a notable recognition of the Israeli Association of Planners. From November 2013 to October 2017 Khamaisi also held the position of Head of Jewish-Arab Center at Haifa University between 2013-2017. Between October 2017 – September 2018, he was a visiting professor/researcher at Queen University Belfast, and the Technical University of Berlin.
Ayelet Kohn is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication at David Yellin Academic College in Jerusalem. Her research focuses on multimodality in media texts. She has published in Visual Communication, Visual Studies, Computers in Human Behavior, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Israeli History, Social Semiotics, Convergence and more. Her latest book, coauthored with Rachel Weissbrod, Multimodal Experiences Across Cultures, Spaces and Identities was published with Routledge, in 2023.
Alon Korngreen is a full professor at the faculty of Life Sciences Bar-Ilan University and the head of BIU’s Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. He is an internationally renowned researcher with more than 30 years’ experience in neuronal computation, biophysics, and neurophysiology. His research fields include system neuroscience, neurodegenerative diseases, motor systems, and electrophysiology.
Joachim J. Krause is Heisenberg-Professor of Hebrew Bible at Ruhr University Bochum. His areas of interest include the literary history of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets, concepts of covenant, political theory in the Hebrew Bible, and the book of Amos, on which he currently writes a commentary. In addition, he serves as chair of the European Association of Biblical Studies research group “Citations and Allusions in the Hebrew Bible,” PI of a research project on the integration of postcolonial theory and historical research into the book of Joshua, and co-director of the Tel Shaddud excavation (www.telshaddud.com).
Adi Levy is a lecturer at the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on the ethical questions of nonviolent civil resistance, social action, and activism. He has taught courses on social struggles for social justice at the University of Haifa and Hadassah Academic College and serves as a consultant on military ethics and civil-military relations for the IDF education and youth corps. Dr. Levy obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa.
Aren M. Maeir is professor of archaeology at the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, whose specialty is Bronze and Iron Age archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean. He is director of the Institute of Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, co-director of the Minerva Center for Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times (aramisrael.org), director of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project (gath.wordpress.co), and director of the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies.
Devorah Manekin is a senior lecturer in the International Relations Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on contentious politics, including political violence, nonviolent resistance campaigns, and intergroup relations. She is the author of Regular Soldiers, Irregular War: Violence and Restraint in the Second Intifada (Cornell University Press, 2020) and of academic articles in such outlets as the American Political Science Review and International Organization.
Einat S. Metzl is an art therapy professor and currently chairs Bar-Ilan University’s Art Therapy Graduate Program. Einat joined BIU in 2021, returning to Israel after 20 years of work and research in the field in the USA, Spain, and Mexico. Prof. Metzl holds an MA in art therapy and Marital and Family Therapy from Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, and a doctoral degree in Art Therapy and Art Education from Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA. Einat’s research and teaching focuses on strengthening art therapy theory and developing connections between art therapy, adjacent disciplines or specific populations (such as art therapy with toddlers and young children, work with immigrant families, multicultural issues in art therapy, connecting art therapy, sex therapy and couple therapy). In addition to her work as a professor, she continues to offer art therapy services to couples and individuals, supervises clinical work, and is an exhibiting artist.
Anathea Portier-Young is an associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Old Testament at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. She specializes in early Jewish apocalyptic and novelistic literature, biblical prophetic literature, and themes of violence, nonviolence, embodiment, and social justice. She is the author of Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Eerdmans, 2011) and the forthcoming book the Prophetic Body: Embodied Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature (Oxford, 2024). She is the co-editor of the book Scripture and Social Justice: Catholic and Ecumeniucal Essays (Fortress, 2018). She holds a PhD in Religion from Duke University, an MA in Biblical Languages from the Graduate Theological Union, and a BA in Classics from Yale.
Frances Raday graduated in law from the London School of Economics. She acquired a doctorate of law and continued on to become a full professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . Raday has written numerous books and articles on the subject of human rights, labor law, religion and human rights, and feminist theory. Raday currently heads the Concord Institute for the Study of the Absorption of International Law in Israel at the College of Management Academic Studies. At the United Nations, Raday has been a Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council and was chair of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women; and is a former member of the Committee to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Raday has, in Israel, served as chairperson of the Advisory Committee to the Commission for Equal Opportunities in Work, and was the founding chairperson of the Legal Center of the Israel Women’s Network. She has represented numerous petitioners in groundbreaking Supreme Court cases in the fields of labor law; trade union freedoms; discrimination on grounds of sex; rights of asylum seekers; recruitment fees for migrant workers; and freedom of and from religion. She has been a co-petitioner or amicus in cases on abortion rights in the Supreme Courts of the UK and of Brazil; an has acted as expert witness in cases on employees’ patent rights in US courts.
Prof. Raday has been awarded an Honorary Professorship at University College, London; and Doctor Honoris at the University of Copenhagen. She has received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including the Cheshin Award for Academic Excellence; the Bar-Niv Prize for Labor Law, the Israel’s Bar Prize for Outstanding Attorneys, and an award from the Israel Women’s Network for exceptional contribution.
Raday’s most recent book is: Economic Woman – Gendering Inequality in the Age of Capital, Routledge 2019
Daniel Raveh is Professor of Indian and Comparative philosophy at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of three books: Exploring the Yogasūtra (Continuum 2012), Sūtras, Stories and Yoga Philosophy (Routledge 2016) and Daya Krishna and Twentieth-Century Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury 2020). He is co-editor of two collections of essays: Contrary Thinking: Selected Essays of Daya Krishna (OUP 2011) and The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (Routledge 2023). His articles appeared in numerous journals, including Journal of Indian Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Sophia, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Journal of World Philosophies, Culture and Dialogue, Prabuddha Bharata and International Journal of Hindu Studies. Raveh translated the Yogasūtra into Hebrew (in Philosophical Threads in Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2010) and English (in Exploring the Yogasūtra, 2012)
Prof. Amnon Reichman is a full Professor at the faculty of law, University of Haifa and a co-Principal Investigator (PI) of the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law Under Extreme Conditions at the University of Haifa. In 2016 Prof. Reichman served as the President of the Israeli Law and Society Association. He specializes in public law (constitutional law and administrative law), and his areas of expertise include models of regulation, neo-institutionalism, separation of powers, theories of judicial review, human rights, and comparative constitutional and administrative law. He is the founder and chair of the Research Forum on the Rule of Law (faculty of law), and heads the graduate program (LL.M.) that specializes in civil and administrative law. He taught and developed the syllabus for the legal segment of the graduate program in Emergency and Disaster Management (Geography Department). Professor Reichman is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF). He is a member of the European Group of Public Law, and has taught in several leading institutions, including UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall), Yeshiva University (Cardozo School of Law) and the Center for Judicial Studies (University of Reno, Nevada). He holds an LLB (Cum Laude) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1994), an LL.M. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) (1996) and an S.J.D from the University of Toronto (2000). He conducted his post-graduate studies at the Center for Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University (2001). Prior to his graduate studies, professor Reichman clerked for the Hon. Justice Aharaon Barak at the Supreme Court of Israel (1995).
Nir Rotem is a postdoctoral fellow at The Leonard Davis Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a sociologist whose interests span the sociology of knowledge, transnational sociology, and sociological neo-institutionalism. His current project examines the global contestations over judicial independence and academic freedom. More broadly, he is interested in the spread of liberal scripts and the contemporary illiberal reaction. He wrote his dissertation at the University of Minnesota, where he studied changes in the humanitarian field.
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (PhD) is a senior lecturer, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her research interests are in Political Sociology, Historical Sociology, Colonialism and Gender. Her forthcoming book “Colonizing Palestine: the Zionist left and the making of the Palestinian Nakba” will be published later this year at Stanford University Press.
Eli Salzberger is a full proffesor and was the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa and the President of the European Association for Law and Economics. He clerked for Chief Justices Aharon Barak and Dorit Beinish. He wrote his doctorate at Oxford University on the economic analysis of the doctrine of separation of powers. His research and teaching areas are legal theory and philosophy, economic analysis of law, legal ethics, cyberspace and the Israeli Supreme Court. He has published more than 50 scientific articles and 3 books. He was a member of the board of directors of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and of the public council of the Israeli Democracy Institute. He served as the director of the DAAD Haifa Center for German and European Studies. He was awarded various grants and fellowships, among them Rothschild, Minerva, GIF, ISF, Fulbright, ORS and British Council. Salzberger was a visiting professor at numerous universities including Princeton, University of Hamburg, Humboldt University, Munich, Bayreuth, University of Torino, Miami Law School, University of St. Galen and UCLA. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg and in 2021 he was awarded “Verdienstkreuz am Bande” by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Currently he is the director of the Minerva Center for the Study of the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions.
Johannes Seidel is research assistant of Prof. Hannes Bezzel at the University of Jena, Old Testament / Hebrew Bible Studies. Previously, he worked as project assistant in a joint project of the University of Leipzig (Prof. Angelika Berlejung) and the Tel Aviv University (Prof. Gideon Bohak): “Between Materiality and Scribal Magic: West-Semitic Textual Amulets from the First Millenium BCE to the Rise of Islam”. He completed his master’s degree, consisting of 75% Old Testament studies and 25% Assyriology, at the University of Heidelberg. His dissertation deals with the cedar tree in its Ancient Near Eastern context.
Attorney Gilead Sher is a former senior peace negotiator and Chief of Staff and Policy Coordinator to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and a. As a reserve officer in the IDF, Colonel Sher served as a company, battalion, and brigade commander, and as a deputy armored corps division commander. During his compulsory service, he fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Sher is a Fellow in Middle East Peace and Security at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He served as a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies INSS, was a visiting professor at Georgetown University in 2019, and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. He co-founded the Central Headquarters for the 2023 pro-democracy struggle.
Sher authored The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations, 1999–2001 (2006), The Battle for Home (2016), and Reflections on Conflict Resolution (2022); he co-edited Negotiating in Times of Conflict (2015) and Spoiling and Coping with Spoilers (2019). His book Reflections on Conflict resolution: In the Middle East and Beyond (2022) comprises 15 of his authored and co-authored articles.
Adam Shinar is an associate Professor at the Harry Radzyner Law School at Reichman University. He holds an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he also served as the Clark Byse Fellow. He also holds an LL.B. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. He clerked for the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, and worked as an attorney for several human rights NGOs in Israel and India.
He specializes in constitutional law and theory and comparative constitutional law. His academic interests include labor law, administrative law, legal theory, sociology of law, and political philosophy. He has written on diverse topics, such as obedience to law by public officials, judicial review, constitutional interpretation, public sector reforms, constitutional rights in the Occupied Territories, and freedom of speech. More recently, he is working on the history of censorship of films and plays in Israel.
Prof. Shinar’s publications appeared in leading journals such as The American Journal of Comparative Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, Global Constitutionalism, Constitutional Commentary, the Theory and Practice of Legislation, and the Connecticut Law Review, among others. His research was presented in leading universities such as Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and the European University Institute, in addition to being cited by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Prof. Shinar was awarded the 2013 Israeli Association of Public Law Gorni Prize for Young Researchers. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and an academic advisory board member of the Israel Supreme Court Project at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University. He also served as a visiting professor at Católica University Law School in Lisbon.
Oded Y. Steinberg is an assistant professor in the departments of International Relations and European Studies (European Forum) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research, as an intellectual historian of international relations, is primarily focused on the exchange of ideas across social and national borders in modern Britain and central Europe. Within this framework, his publications have explored various aspects of British and central European intellectual, cultural and diplomatic history. His latest book Race, Nation, History: Anglo-German Thought in the Victorian Era was published in 2019 (Penn: University of Pennsylvania Press).
Deborah F. Shmueli is a full professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. She is a co-Principal Investigator of the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions and the Head of the National Knowledge and Research Center for Emergency Readiness, Israel. She is a planner specializing in public policy and environmental issues and has published widely in these areas. Strong foci are alternative dispute management, collaborative planning, and community and institutional capacity building, environmental and public policy, resilience and emergency management. She currently serves as one of five permanent members of the Haifa Metropolitan Area Permanent Geographic Boundary Committee, Ministry of Interior. She received her BS and MCP degrees from MIT (1980), and her DSc from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (1992).
Stefan Voigt is professor at the University of Hamburg and the director of its Institute of Law & Economics. He is a fellow with CESifo (Munich). Previous positions include chairs at the Universities of Marburg, Kassel and Ruhr-University Bochum. Voigt has been a fellow at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Berlin, in Greifswald, and at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the economic effects of institutions. Stefan has numerous publications on the economic effects of constitutions. More recently, he has become interested in both the determinants and the effects of informal institutions. Voigt is one of the editors of Constitutional Political Economy and a member of various boards including those of Public Choice and the International Review of Law & Economics. Voigt has consulting experience with both the public and the private sector. He has worked with the World Bank, the European Commission and the OECD but also with the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). Prof. Voigt is also a co-Principal Investigator of the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions.
Rachel Weissbrod is professor emerita in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Her areas of research include translation theory, literary translation into Hebrew, audiovisual translation and adaptation. She has published in Target, The Translator, Meta, Babel, Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance and more. Her book Not by Word Alone – Fundamental Issues in Translation (in Hebrew) was published by the Open University of Israel in 2007. Her latest books, coauthored with Dr. Ayelet Kohn, are Translating the Visual: A Multimodal Perspective (Routledge 2019) and Multimodal Experiences Across Cultures, Spaces and Identities (Routledge 2023).
Gad Yair is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His academic interests are social theory, culture and education. Professor Yair is a popular commentator in Israeli media channels and occasionally contributes op-ed pieces to Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. In 2011 he published, The Code of Israeliness: The Ten Commandments for the 21st Century. The book explains Israeli culture in terms of the clash between Judaism and Zionism around interpreting the ancient traumas that haunt the Jewish people. Professor Yair received his Ph.D. from Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1994).
