Professor Emerita Ruth Gavison was a world-renowned expert in jurisprudence, a brilliant philosopher, and a pivotal figure in the Israeli public discourse on the relationships between law and morality, politics and religions. As a leading voice for human rights and Israeli democracy, she founded and served as president of Israel’s largest civil rights organization the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Prof. Gavison worked her whole life to promote a humanistic, liberal, Zionist Israel. She was awarded the Israel Prize in 2011 for her legal research, and was first appointed as an instructor at the Faculty of Law in 1969. She was one of the most influential jurists and forward-thinkers in the legal world and in Israeli society.
President Reuven Rivlin mourned her passing on Twitter: “Prof. Ruth Gavison was a brilliant jurist. Her acute and complex thinking, crystal clear and bright, could not be pigeonholed. In word and deed she the ‘and’ between Jewish and democratic, democratic and Jewish. Our society and our country will deeply miss her voice.”
Professor Gavison’s passing leaves a void in the legal and academic world, and Israeli society as a whole.
May her memory be blessed.