Michael Melchior

Michael Melchior was born in Copenhagen in 1954, the son of Bent Melchior, chief rabbi of Denmark.[1] His family had a multigenerational Scandinavian rabbinical tradition; he has been described as the eighth generation in a line of Danish rabbis.[6] After high school, he studied at Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem and received rabbinical ordination in 1980.[1] Recalling his early relationship with Israel in a 2002 interview, Melchior said he first visited the country in 1972.[7]

In September 1980, his father inaugurated him as rabbi in Oslo at a ceremony attended by representatives of Lutheran and Catholic churches, universities, and state and municipal authorities.[4] The Oslo Jewish community had been without a rabbi for much of the period following World War II.[4] Melchior settled in Israel in 1986 while retaining his responsibilities in Norway, spending approximately four months each year in Oslo until 1999.[4] He also served as rabbi of a Jerusalem congregation from 1986.[2]

In 1981, Melchior opened a Jewish kindergarten in Oslo that received some municipal financial support and became an entry point into communal life for children and their parents.[4] His rabbinate was associated with renewed participation in the community and increased attendance at Sabbath morning services.[4] Working with the synagogue cantor, he helped establish a children's choir and introduced new melodies into Sabbath worship, while the post-service kiddush became a regular weekly gathering.[4]

Jewish education under Melchior extended beyond classroom instruction to obligatory weekend seminars and camps, allowing children to experience the practices they studied.[8] The educational principle was that “Jewish culture should not merely be learnt but also lived.”[8] During the 1990s, approximately 70 pupils aged seven to sixteen attended Oslo's religious afternoon school, where the cantor and community members taught; enrollment remained relatively stable.[4]

Melchior also made Judaism more visible in Norwegian public life through appearances on national television and frequent newspaper coverage.[4] In his 2002 interview, he recalled that the Norwegian Islamic Association had sometimes asked him to represent it before the government.[7] He also said it arranged meetings with representatives of countries that officially refused to meet Israelis, describing these encounters as part of his interreligious engagement.[7]

His work connected Scandinavian Jewish leadership with international Jewish organizations and Israeli public life.[2][7] Melchior said that, while dividing his time between Oslo and Jerusalem before 1999, he also served as international relations director for the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.[7] He later met members of the Jewish Diplomatic Corps at a synagogue event in Malmö held during the International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism.[9] By 2026, his son Joav had succeeded him as chief rabbi of Norway, while Michael Melchior continued to head the rabbinical court of Scandinavia.[6]

Melchior decided to enter politics after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and became chairman of Meimad in 1996.[10][2] The party's name is a Hebrew acronym for “A Jewish state, a democratic state.”[10] Founded in 1988 by Rabbi Yehuda Amital, Meimad offered an alternative political voice within religious Zionism; in its first election, it received approximately 17,000 votes, about 5,000 fewer than required to enter the Knesset.[11]

In 1998, Melchior called for a new social contract between religious and secular Israelis, responding to survey findings that 63 percent regarded tensions between the groups as the country's greatest threat.[12] He said Meimad would act within the democratic political arena rather than take direction behind the scenes from religious authorities.[12] His approach joined a commitment to Jewish identity with opposition to religious coercion and concern over divisions between religious and secular communities.[2][12]

Before the 1999 election, Meimad joined Labor and Gesher in the One Israel alliance, whose list won 26 seats.[13] Melchior entered the Knesset in May 1999 and served as minister in the Prime Minister's Office responsible for Diaspora and social affairs from August 1999 to March 2001.[2] From March 2001 to October 2002, he served as deputy minister of foreign affairs.[2]

In February 2002, Melchior met U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley in Washington.[14] The meetings occurred during a public Senate debate over whether American assistance to Israel and Egypt should be conditioned on progress in Middle East diplomacy.[14] In January 2005, he was appointed deputy minister of education, culture and sports and was also responsible for Diaspora affairs and the fight against antisemitism.[15][16]

The following month, Melchior made a three-day official visit to Qatar, the first visit by a senior Israeli figure there in eight years, since the 1997 economic conference.[17] He met the foreign ministry's director-general, religious figures and Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat, and participated in the Doha Debates, a Qatar Foundation forum promoting dialogue and freedom of expression.[17] Melchior said he raised concerns about an antisemitic television series and received a condemnation of its content and a promise to address it.[17] He described the audience as friendly and interested in regional developments, and said his remarks received applause.[17]

Melchior served three Knesset terms, spanning roughly a decade.[10][11] In the 2009 election, he ran unsuccessfully on a joint ticket with the Green Movement.[10] In 2012, he announced that he would not contest the next election because he saw no arrangement that would honor Meimad's platform, choosing instead to pursue his objectives through civil society.[10] He sought to revive Meimad in 2018 but said he did not intend to return to politics personally.[11]

Melchior was the founding chairman of Taglit-Birthright Israel from 1999 to 2004.[10] His government responsibilities concerning the world Jewish community also encompassed Holocaust restitution and international racism and antisemitism, as he explained in a 2002 interview.[7] He argued that Israel's early attention to Diaspora and Holocaust-related questions had been limited partly by the new state's existential needs and by changing international circumstances during the Cold War.[7] In his account, the Eichmann trial played an important role in gradually transforming Israeli awareness of the Holocaust and attitudes toward survivors.[7]

On restitution, Melchior distinguished Germany's payments to Israel in the 1950s from compensation for property and losses affecting Jews outside Israel.[7] He said the former had helped Israel's economy and immigrant absorption, whereas the latter involved a wider set of individual and communal claims.[7] He argued that restitution returned to prominence after the fall of communism, but that Israel left much of the ensuing struggle to international Jewish organizations because of political and economic considerations.[7] In his view, Israel nevertheless had a responsibility to participate as the Jewish state.[7]

Melchior presented Norway as an example of restitution discussions serving an educational purpose as well as a financial one.[7] He said thousands of articles introduced a generation to Holocaust history and that the Norwegian parliament ultimately supported restitution payments unanimously.[7] He credited research by the Jewish community, historian Bjarte Bruland and Berit Reisel, the community's representative on the investigation commission, with sustaining that effort.[7]

He also said he initiated an information center for Holocaust survivors in cooperation with survivor organizations and the Claims Conference, with partial Foreign Ministry funding.[7] The center was intended to help survivors understand bureaucratic procedures and exercise their rights, following a Brookdale Institute survey that found survivors lacked information about claiming benefits.[7]

As deputy foreign minister, Melchior described efforts to gather systematic information on antisemitic incidents through international contacts and an internet site.[7] He advocated research capacity that could track and analyze changes in antisemitism, while distinguishing it from criticism that did not demonize Jews, Israel or Jewish national identity.[7] His subsequent participation in the Malmö gathering continued his engagement with Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.[9]

Melchior established Mosaica in 1999 with Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to develop a different approach to religious engagement in peacemaking.[6] He became founder and chairman of the Mosaica Center for Religious Conflict Transformation in the Middle East.[18] By 2026, its work brought together hundreds of Jewish and Muslim religious leaders in Israel, the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and beyond.[6] Melchior described the organization as working largely behind the scenes and said that “thousands of lives have been saved through our work.”[6]

On January 20–21, 2002, Melchior participated as an Israeli representative in the Alexandria interfaith summit in Egypt.[3] Approximately twenty religious scholars from Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority met under the presidency of Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, following several years of preparation.[3] The gathering brought together Muslim, Christian and Israeli Jewish leaders and initiated the Alexandria Interfaith Peace Process.[3][19]

The resulting Alexandria Declaration committed religious leaders to “the dignity of the individual, whatever his or her religion, and an end to bloodshed.”[20] Mosaica and religious figures including Melchior subsequently continued this work.[20] His interfaith activities sought to advance peace and discourage terrorism and violence.[19] He argued that religious leaders and their followers needed a place within peace efforts rather than remaining outside the diplomatic process.[18]

Melchior connected his support for peace to his Jewish historical and religious attachment to the land.[6] He said this connection motivated his move to Israel, while also expressing the belief that another people's presence there was part of God's will.[6] He advocated peace with Israel's neighbors through a two-state framework and said he did not believe Israelis and Palestinians could live together in a single state.[6]

His religious engagement also included responses to episodes of violence.[21] In August 2015, after the terrorist arson attack in Duma killed toddler Ali Dawabsheh, Melchior joined senior rabbis and Muslim religious figures in visiting injured family members at Sheba Medical Center.[21] He condemned the killing as a “double crime”: murder and committing murder in the name of the God who prohibited it.[21] He expressed the hope that meetings with sheikhs would become an everyday occurrence rather than something reserved for emergencies.[21]

In May 2025, Melchior led a session at the World Jewish Congress's 17th Plenary Assembly in Jerusalem on confronting antisemitism after October 7.[22] The approach involved Jewish and Muslim religious leaders acting as insider mediators to prevent a broader “holy war” and combat antisemitism.[22] At a London conference in July 2026 dealing with Israel, religion, nationalism, Jewish law and ethics, he discussed responsibility, coexistence and religious leaders' role in preventing conflict.[23] Drawing on his engagement with Jewish and Muslim figures, he argued that “religious peace can make the breakthrough.”[23]

Melchior founded Meitarim in 2000 as an alternative to educating secular and religious pupils in separate state-school systems.[5] The network welcomed secular, traditional and religious families and taught Jewish values and culture through multiple perspectives.[5] In 2016, it comprised 70 schools, including kindergartens and institutions at elementary, middle and high-school levels.[5] In a 2026 interview, Melchior said it had expanded from two schools to 180 institutions within its framework.[6]

Meitarim's approach combined pluralistic study with Jewish practice that was generally Orthodox-based.[5] One teaching method, called “reading barefoot,” asked pupils to encounter a Jewish text directly and discuss their responses before turning to commentators.[5] The schools could draw on Rashi, Rambam and Sforno alongside Bialik, Ahad Ha'am, Brenner, Shakespeare and Michelangelo.[5]

Melchior also initiated an integrated-education framework bringing religious and secular pupils together and sent his own children to such a school.[24] The relevant law passed in 2008, with implementation formalized in 2011.[24] From the 2012–13 school year, participating institutions were to receive government funding and closer curriculum oversight.[24] The preceding school year included approximately 15 schools and more than 20 kindergartens, with further institutions expected to join.[24] Melchior said the framework could help pupils “grow and develop together” by emphasizing shared commitments rather than divisions.[24]

As chair of the Knesset Education Committee, he proposed an amendment to the Public Libraries Law approved in 2007.[25] The measure was intended to increase public-library funding by 50 percent, with an agreement providing an additional 11 million shekels over six years and local authorities undertaking not to reduce their contributions.[25] At the time, the state covered only about six to nine percent of library budgets, although the 1975 law permitted it to fund up to half.[25] Against a background of closures and severe funding shortages, Melchior said the amendment would help save libraries from collapse and preserve their educational and cultural role.[25]

His social-policy work extended to natural-resource revenue through the Forum for Civil Action, which he established in 2010 and which supported increasing the public share of gas royalties.[26] He co-founded the forum with Ron Verber and brought businessman Robert Weil into the campaign; Weil became a donor to the organization.[27]

Melchior received the Bridgebuilder Prize in 1993 from the joint council of Norwegian Church academies for fostering dialogue among people of different groups and backgrounds and countering the influence of “hatemongers.”[4] His other honors included the Norwegian Nobel Institute's Prize for Tolerance and Bridge-Building and Yeshivat Hakotel's Award for Work in the Diaspora Rabbinate.[2]

The institutions associated with his work span Jewish communal education, Israel–Diaspora relations and religious mediation: the Oslo kindergarten, Taglit-Birthright Israel, Meitarim and Mosaica.[4][10][5][6] His programs addressed divisions between rich and poor, Arabs and Jews, and secular and religious Israelis.[2] He advocated the ability to maintain a strong Jewish identity without pressure or coercion, linking Jewish communal commitments with efforts to bridge social differences.[2]

At a 2008 memorial event in Rehovot attended by more than 200 people from different political and religious backgrounds, Melchior urged synagogues to commemorate Rabin's assassination as they marked other fast days of remembrance.[28] The appeal connected his post-assassination entry into politics with an ongoing concern for the responsibilities of religious communities in Israeli public life.[10][28]

Melchior's criticism of established Jewish institutions included remarks at a forum of major Jewish organizations convened by President Moshe Katsav.[16] In a discussion involving Likud politics and disengagement, he said the Jewish Agency had been hijacked by politicians “who couldn't get jobs,” and criticized officials for securing positions for favored people rather than providing leadership.[16]

His assessments of peace diplomacy emphasized what he regarded as the exclusion of religion from the Oslo process and inadequate handling of religious questions at Camp David under Ehud Barak.[6][18] These were his interpretations of the processes: he argued that a largely nonreligious peace camp had created too narrow a “tent” and that people might surrender land but not their identity.[6] His descriptions of Mosaica's lifesaving impact likewise represent his own assessment rather than an independently quantified outcome.[6]

Melchior also characterized the 2001 Durban conference as a watershed in antisemitism and argued that proposals focusing on Israel demonized Jews.[7] He recalled helping organize an Oslo hearing against antisemitism in 1983, where psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Leo Eitinger analyzed Norwegian coverage of the 1982 Lebanon war.[7] Melchior presented that hearing as an early response to antisemitism targeting Israeli national identity.[7] His gas-revenue campaign also attracted political allegations about its associations and interests, which he rejected.[26]