Baruch Kimmerling

Baruch Kimmerling (Hebrew: ברוך קימרלינג; 16 October 1939 – 20 May 2007) was an Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon his death in 2007, The Times described him as "the first academic to use scholarship to reexamine the founding tenets of Zionism and the Israeli State". Though a sociologist by training, Kimmerling was associated with the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who question the official narrative of Israel's creation. He was born with cerebral palsy, a developmental disability which led him using on a wheelchair for the last three decades of his life. His family narrowly avoided the Holocaust by escaping from Turda in a Romani wagon in 1944, after rumors of the imminent deportation of the Jews began circulating. During the journey, the wagon was strafed by a German plane. When the Kimmerling family returned to Turda after the war had ended, they discovered their property had gone.

Despite his significant disabilities, which caused Kimmerling to experience motor difficulties and speech problems, his parents raised him as a typical child and encouraged him to strive high. He lectured widely and wrote nine books and hundreds of essays.

Kimmerling died at the age of 67 after a long battle with cancer.