PRAWER, JOSHUA

PRAWER, JOSHUA (1917–1990), Israel historian. Born in Bedzin, Poland, Prawer settled in Palestine in 1936. He began teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1947 and was promoted to the chair of medieval history in 1958. From 1962 to 1966 he was dean of the faculty of humanities. Prawer also served the Israel Ministry of Education as chairman of the pedagogical council for the planning of national education (1957–59) and headed the committee that recommended reforms in secondary education, which constituted the basis of the reform law adopted by the Knesset in 1968. He was also a co-founder and first dean of the Haifa University College, whose academic chairman he was from 1966 to 1968. Prawer's scholarly interests centered mainly on the Crusades. He wrote Mamlekhet Yerushalayim ha-Ẓalbanit ("The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem," 1946–47), Toledot Mamlekhet ha-Ẓalbanim be-Ereẓ-Israel ("A History of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem," 2 vols., 1963), and The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1988). He was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and from 1967 chief editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica. In 1969 he was awarded the Israel Prize for humanities. (George Schwab)