With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Baruch Kimmerling: Sociologist and 'new historian,' dies at age 67

Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, one of the first to apply post-colonial theories to the Zionist movement, died Sunday after a long battle with cancer. He was 67.

Despite his lack of training as a historian, Professor Kimmerling was identified with "the new historians" who provided alternative views on Israel's history. He also studied Israeli power structures.

Defining himself as a "sociologist of politics in the wider sense of the term," Kimmerling was for many years a guest columnist at Haaretz.

He will be laid to rest in a secular funeral at Kibbutz Mishmoret at 2 P.M. today.

His wife, Diana, said yesterday that Kimmerling had been hospitalized several times due to cancer, "but last Thursday he decided he didn't want to be tossed around from one hospital to another anymore. He wanted to die at home."

Over the weekend he went into a coma and died on Sunday evening.

"He loved to stimulate thought, he had ideas that were astoundingly original. He was a human being, a friend and a father," she said.

Kimmerling was born in 1939 in Transylvania, Romania. He was disabled all his life due to cerebral palsy. He had speech difficulties and was confined to a wheelchair, yet traveled to conferences worldwide. ...
Read entire article at Haaretz