Rynhold Jonathan, Head of the Jonathan Sacks Institute

Professor Jonathan Rynhold is the Academic Director of the Jonathan Sacks Institute at Bar-Ilan University. Between 2021 and 2025, he served as the Head of the department of Political Studies.

He received his PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in 1998. In 2012-13, he was the Schusterman Visiting Professor of Israeli Politics at the George Washington University in Washington DC.

Prof. Rynhold’s research focuses on primarily on US-Israeli relations. He also publishes on Israel’s politics and foreign policy.

In this vein, he has authored many publications, for example on the policy of the Trump and Biden administrations to Israel; partisanship and attitudes towards Israel in the United States; and the influence of the pro-Israel lobby; as well as Israeli policy towards the peace process and the role of peace and security in Israeli elections.

His book entitled The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture, published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, won the annual Israeli Association for Political Science book prize.

Prof. Rynhold is regularly interviewed by a wide variety of news outlets, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN, The Daily Telegraph, El Pais, Libération, De Spiegel, the Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel and Ha'aretz.