18 Facts About Joshua Prawer

Joshua Prawer was a notable Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Joshua Prawer was 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.

Joshua Prawer grew up speaking Polish and German, learned Hebrew, French, and Latin at school, and after joining a Zionist group, learned Yiddish as well.

Joshua Prawer immigrated to Palestine in 1936, where he learned English, and became a student of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Joshua Prawer's mother died at the outbreak of World War II, and most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust.

Joshua 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.

Joshua Prawer began his teaching career at the Hebrew University in 1947 and soon rose through the faculty ranks.

Joshua Prawer has been described as an outstanding teacher and lecturer who combined thorough preparation with a charismatic style.

Joshua Prawer was a key contributor to Israeli government policy as well.

Joshua Prawer fought against graded fees and for wider free compulsory education, and gave high priority to social integration and the rights of Sephardi students.

Together with Professor H Hanani, Prawer initiated the mechina university preparatory programs in 1963, which were originally intended to provide an additional year of study for Sephardic students after discharge from the defense forces, but were later expanded to include foreign educated students and immigrants.

Joshua Prawer served as chief editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica from 1967 onwards, with volume 21 the first to be published under his tenure.

Joshua Prawer advised and helped shape the Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem, and was asked to advise the government on cultural agreements with other countries.

Joshua Prawer was part of a cadre of historians, including Claude Cahen and Jean Richard, who freed crusader studies from the old conception of crusader society as an exemplar of pure, unchanging feudalism that spontaneously emerged from the conquest.

Joshua Prawer's research extended to a wide variety of other aspects of the crusader states.

One of Joshua Prawer's best known works is the Histoire du Royaume Latin de Jerusalem, which won him the Prix Gustave Schlumberger of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

Joshua Prawer's thesis is that the economy, society, and institutions of the Latin states are best understood in the light of their colonial status.

Joshua Prawer was often asked to comment on this analogy, and claimed that a major difference was that the Jews settled the land and worked it, whereas the Crusaders lorded over a conquered land worked by the natives.