Biographical Information

Justice Menachem Elon, who served as the first Gruss Professor of Talmudic Civil Law, has had a long and distinguished career as a legal scholar.  A student of the Hebron Yeshiva and an ordained Rabbi, Justice Elon earned his diploma from the Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics in 1948 and received a Masters degree in Humanities from the Hebrew University in 1953.  In 1961 he was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree, cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He began his affiliation with the Hebrew University in 1954, and, in 1972 was appointed professor of Jewish Law.  In 1963 Justice Elon was appointed Head of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University, and from 1968 to 1971 he served as Editor of the Division of Jewish Law of the Encyclopedia Judaica.  In 1977 Justice Elon was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel and served as its Deputy President from 1988 until his retirement in 1993. 

He has been a guest lecturer on the Faculty of Law at Oxford University, University College of London, and a visiting professor at Harvard University School of Law.  He was also a member of government committees for the preparation of various bills of the Israeli Civil Law Codification, and is the author of numerous books and articles on Jewish Law and the Responsa Literature.  On Israeli Independence Day in 1979, Justice Elon received Israel's highest civilian award, The Israel Prize, for his three-volume book on Jewish Law and outstanding contributions to this field. A four-volume English translation of this book, entitled Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, was published in 1994.  In 1993, he was elected President of the World Union of Jewish Studies.