Ilya Dvorkin

Ilya Dvorkin (Илья Саулович Дворкин) is a Russian and Israeli historian, philologist and philosopher. Organizer and the first rector of St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies in 1989 - 1997.

Biography
Ilya Dvorkin was born in 1954 in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). He graduated from the Polytechnic University there, where he specialized in theoretical physics and cybernetics, but later his interests shifted towards philosophy and history, especially Jewish studies. In 1989, he became the organizer and rector of the Petersburg Jewish University, which revived the study and teaching of Jewish studies in Russia. In 1994, he was a visiting professor at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard. In 1998, he completed his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Maimonides at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1998, he has been in Israel, teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also frequently taught at the philosophy faculties of Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University.

Scientific activity
He defended his thesis on "Reflexive Logical Method in the Analysis of Complex Systems" and published his first printed works on this topic in the 1980s. He also worked on semiotics. He then entered graduate school in the history of science. Starting in 1987, he began conducting ethnographic expeditions to study the disappearing forms of Jewish life in the USSR, collecting a vast amount of materials - 3,000 photographs, 300 hours of interview and video recordings. The accumulated experience allowed him to establish the St. Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies in 1989, of which he became the first rector. Later, he studied at the Yeshiva of Adin Steinsaltz and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He prepared his dissertation in St. Petersburg, and since 1998 has lived in Israel, working at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He considers the philosophy of dialogue as his main philosophical specialty. He is the author of 9 books and 80 publications.

Family
He is married with five children. He has a daughter from his first marriage.