Prof. Dvora Hacohen, Prominent Israeli Historian and Immigration Expert, Dies at 90
Prof. Dvora Hacohen, a renowned historian and Bar-Ilan University professor emerita who specialized in Israeli immigration and absorption, has died at 90 in Jerusalem.
Prof. Dvora Hacohen, a prominent researcher of immigration and absorption in Israel and a professor emerita at Bar-Ilan University, has passed away at the age of 90. Her funeral took place on Friday at the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem.
Born in 1936 to the Klears family—she was the great-granddaughter of Rabbi Moshe Klears, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Tiberias—Hacohen dedicated decades to studying how waves of immigration shaped Israeli society, from the pre-state Yishuv era to the massive immigration wave from the former Soviet Union. She earned her degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, and Bar-Ilan University, where her doctorate in sociology and anthropology focused on mass immigration between 1948 and 1953.
Hacohen's research challenged conventional historical narratives of Israel's early statehood. By exposing classified government and Jewish Agency discussions, she revealed sharp debates surrounding mass immigration that contrasted with the official public narrative. Among her notable books are Immigrants in Turmoil (1994), The Million Plan (1994) regarding David Ben-Gurion's immigration strategy, and Children of Time (2011), a comprehensive study on Youth Aliyah that won the Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Prize. In 2019, she published a biography of Henrietta Szold titled Leader Without Borders, which was later released by Harvard University Press as To Repair a Broken World.
Alongside her academic career, Hacohen was actively engaged in public service. She served as an advisor to the Ministry of Education during the 1990s immigration wave from the former Soviet Union, advising on the integration of immigrant children. She was also a visiting scholar at Harvard, New York University, and Oxford, authoring ten books and publishing over a hundred scholarly articles.
Hacohen was married to the late Rabbi Menahem Hacohen, a former Knesset member and rabbi of the Moshavim Movement, until his passing in August 2025. She is survived by three children: attorney Miron Hacohen, Prof. Aviad Hacohen, and Dr. Hagit Hacohen-Wolf.
