Noam Zohar earned his BA and Master degrees at the Hebrew University in Jewish Thought, and his PhD there in Philosophy in 1991. He is Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Bioethics in the Department of Philosophy at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He teaches Rabbinics, Philosophy of Halakhah (=Jewish Law), and Moral and Political Philosophy, with an emphasis on Applied Ethics. He has served on various committees and national commissions, advising on issues of ethics in healthcare; and has recently been appointed to the National Bioethics Council. He is also active in promoting gender equality in the Israeli legal system, particularly in the context of family law as impacted by state-mandated religious courts.
Professor Zohar has been a visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics, and at its Center for Jewish Studies. He is author of numerous articles in the above-mentioned fields. His books include Alternatives in Jewish Bioethics (SUNY Press 1997), Quality of Life in Jewish Bioethics (editor, Lexington Books 2006), and The Jewish Political Tradition (co-editor, with Michael Walzer and others – Yale University Press; Volume 1: Authority, 2000, Volume 2: Membership 2003, Volumes 3-4 forthcoming).