Israel Yuval is an historian of the jews in the middle ages

He is holding the Teddy Kollek Chair for Cultural Studies of Vienna and Jerusalem at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is teaching at the Department of Jewish History. In 2002 he founded Scholion - Research Center for Jewish Studies and was its head from 2002 till 2010. From 1998-2008 he was the head of Germania Judaica IV (together with Prof. Michael Toch, Jerusalem and Prof. Stefan Rohrbacher, Duisburg). In 2011-12 he was a co-editor of Tarbiz – A Quarterly in Jewish Studies. His book Scholars in Their Time: The Religious Leadership of German Jewry in the Late Middle Ages, 1988 won the Zalman Shazar Prize in Jewish history. His book “Two Nations in Your Womb”. Perceptions of Jews and Christians, Hebrew: Magnes Press 2000, won the Bialik Prize in Jewish studies and literature, 2002. An English translation was published in 2006 by the University of California Press, a German translation by Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht 2007 and a French translation by Albin Michel 2012. The book was the winner of "Le prix des amis de P.A. Bernheim" awarded by the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2013.

In 2016 he was the recipient of Verdienstkreuz am Bande des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.