Menachem Elon

Menachem Elon (Hebrew: מנחם אלון; pronunciation^ⓘ; November 1, 1923 – February 6, 2013) was an Israeli jurist and Professor of Law specializing in traditional Jewish Law, an Orthodox rabbi, and a prolific author on traditional Jewish law (Halakha). He was the head of the Jewish Law Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lost the 1983 Israeli Presidential Election to Chaim Herzog.

Elon served as a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court from 1977–1993, and as its Deputy President from 1988–1993.

Menachem Fetter (later Elon) was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, into a religious Jewish family from Hasidic backgrounds. Elon's family fled to the Netherlands a year before Nazism's ascent in Germany. In 1935, Elon's family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. In 1938, he studied Halakha (traditional Jewish law) in the Hebron Yeshiva, and was ordained as a rabbi by chief rabbis Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel and Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog. He was among the founders of a yeshiva high school Midrashiat Noam in Pardes Hanna, and served for two years as a teacher there, and became one of the founders of the religious Kibbutz Tirat Zvi in the Beit She'an Valley.

The Elon family, a member of the religious Zionist elite, is entrenched in the world of law, politics, Literature, and Halakha (Jewish religious law). In 1949, Menachem Elon married Ruth Buchsbaum, the daughter of Dr. Mordechai Buchsbaum, an Orthodox Jewish attorney and a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. Amongst Elon's five children are Rabbi Binyamin Elon (married to writer Emuna Elon), a former member of Knesset and cabinet minister (Minister of Tourism, 2001–2004); Rabbi Mordechai Elon, the former head of Yeshivat HaKotel; Joseph ("Sefi") Elon, a district judge in Be'er Sheva and temporary judge of the Supreme Court of Israel (2007–2009); and Ari Elon, who is secular and a lecturer on the Bible.

Elon earned his diploma from the Tel Aviv School of Law and Economics in 1948. In the early 1950s, he worked as an attorney in private practice, while at the same time completing an M.A. in Talmud, Jewish history, and philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1962, he received his doctorate. In 1955, he began a parallel career as a lecturer in Hebrew law at Hebrew University, and was subsequently appointed teaching associate, senior lecturer, associate professor, and, in 1972, Professor of Jewish Law. He also served as a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Oxford University, University College of London, McGill University, and University of Pennsylvania, and as a visiting professor at Harvard University School of Law and at New York University School of Law.

In 1963, Elon was appointed head of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University, where he edited 10 volumes of The Annual of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law, as well as a digest of the response of the medieval authorities. From 1968 to 1971, he served as editor of the Division of Jewish Law of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and served as the editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica.

He played a pivotal role in the Mishpat Ivri (Hebrew Law) movement. Among his many works, he authored the foundational Jewish Law : History, Sources, Principles - a monumental, three-volume book on Hebrew law for academic use and the training of Israeli law students. In 1955, he was appointed senior assistant to the Attorney General of Israel Haim Cohn, and from 1959 to 1966, Elon served as adviser on Jewish Law to the Israel Ministry of Justice, a job which included writing legal opinions based on Jewish law regarding every law proposed in Knesset. He was a member of numerous Israeli Public Inquiry committees, and he served on committees to prepare legal proposals in various fields of civil law.

In 1979, Elon was awarded the Israel Prize for Hebrew law.