Yonatan Dekel-Chen (born September 7, 1963) is a historian and the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a dual appointment in the Departments of Jewish and General History and has held leadership roles in research centers and academic departments. His work focuses on modern Jewish history, transnational philanthropy, non-state diplomacy, and migration.^[1] He has been a visiting professor at leading universities and co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts in 2014.^[2]

Yonatan Dekel-Chen was born as Jonathan Markowitz in the town of Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA. His parents, a Holocaust survivor opera singer and a cantor, emigrated to the United States from Europe after World War II. In his youth, he studied Hebrew and was active in the Reform movement’s youth organization.^[3]

He first came to Israel in 1981 after high school. He later returned to the United States, but after a year in college, he decided to move back to Israel and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He served from 1982 to 1985 during the First Lebanon War. During his service, he met his first wife, a member of Kibbutz Geshur in the Golan Heights. They initially lived in Geshur but later moved to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he worked as the manager of the agricultural mechanization unit.

In 1993, he received permission from the kibbutz to pursue higher education and began studying International Relations and Slavic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After completing his bachelor's and master's degrees, he moved with his family to Boston in 1997 to pursue a PhD at Brandeis University. His doctoral research focused on Jewish agricultural settlement in the Soviet Union between the two world wars, and he completed his degree within four years. Afterward, he returned to Israel and joined the faculty at the Hebrew University, holding positions in both the Department of General History and the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry.

Professor Dekel-Chen holds the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has served as the Academic Chairman of the Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry and as Chair of both the Russian Studies Department and the Department of Jewish History. His research has been published by Yale University Press, Indiana University Press, Magnes Press. His work explores the modern Jewish world, Applied Humanities, transnationalism, Jewish history, agrarian history, international relations, philanthropy, non-state diplomacy, and modern migration.^[4]

Dekel-Chen is married and a father of four. He is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz. In 2014, he and his sons initiated the establishment of the Bikurim Youth Village for Excellence in Performing Arts. The village, located in the Eshkol Regional Council, was founded to provide world-class artistic education for talented teenagers from Israel’s periphery.

During the events of October 7, 2023, his son, Sagui, was abducted to Gaza. On February 15, 2025, Sagui was returned to Israel as part of the second hostage deal.^[5][6][7]

• Framing the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonialism and Local Soviet Power, 1923–1941, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005
• Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History, (editor with David Gaunt, Natan Meir, Israel Bartal), Bloomingtoon: Indiana University Press, 2010
• Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe and Byond: New Histories of an Old Accusation, (editor with Eugene Avrutin and Robert Weinbers), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017

• Jonathan Dekel-Chen - Jewels from the Earth
• מחנה משותף": המעבר מ"עסקי אוויר" לעבודת האדמה - פרופ יונתן דקל חן