Strata: Happy 100th Birthday, Joseph

Yom huledet sameach! Happy birthday, Joseph (he pronounces it Yosef). On March 16, 2016, Joseph Aviram will be 100 years old!

Joseph Aviram is still the working president of the Israel Exploration Society. Indeed, Joseph Aviram and the Israel Exploration Society (IES) are almost synonymous. He has been associated with the IES since 1940. In 2010 he was promoted from director to president to relieve the then-94-year-old director of some of his managerial burdens. But nothing has changed! He still sits at the same desk and manages the same operation.

Born in Poland, Aviram immigrated to Palestine in 1936. In 1940 he became the secretary of what was to become the Israel Exploration Society (then the Jewish Palestine Exploration Fund, founded three years before Aviram was born). He has been affiliated with the organization ever since—76 years.

During much of this time he also served as Secretary of the Humanities Faculty of Hebrew University, which included archaeology, and as director of its Institute of Archaeology. With his joint appointments at Hebrew University and IES and his close association with Yigael Yadin, the dramatic star of Israeli archaeology, Joseph Aviram was involved with some of the most exciting post-1948 excavations in the new state—Hazor, Masada and the Dead Sea Caves, among them.