Nissim Mizrachi (Hebrew: ניסים מזרחי; born 1962) is an Israeli sociologist. Mizrachi is a full professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University and a senior research fellow and the head of the “Challenge of Shared Life” Cluster at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. His primary research themes are the sociology of knowledge, medicine, culture, social boundaries, moral identity, liberalism, ethnic studies, and stigma. Mizrachi is best known as a leading figure in promoting the post-liberal turn in contemporary critical discourse in Israel. This approach seeks to liberate current research from the constraints of what he calls the "liberal grammar" of critical discourse. This entails a deliberate effort to extricate the research perspective from the liberal-progressive stance that has become the default position for understanding and reforming society. This shift does not imply opposition to principles such as freedom and equality on a normative level. Instead, it involves expanding the interpretative space beyond the confines of liberal-progressive thinking. In his latest book, Mizrachi argues that to understand the so-called paradoxical behavior—the resistance of minority and marginalized groups to principles of equality and freedom from which they are more likely to benefit—it is essential to acknowledge a deep-seated need for belonging. Recognizing this sense of rootedness, which reflects the intrinsic desire for connection, is vital for grasping the conditions under which liberal values such as equality and freedom can thrive. He asserts that taking rootedness seriously is crucial for opening new avenues to preserve democracy in a landscape of profound diversity.
Biography Nissim Mizrachi was born and raised in Kiryat HaYovel, a working-class neighborhood in Jerusalem predominantly populated by Mizrahi Jews, immigrants from Middle Eastern and North African countries. The neighborhood also included other Jewish communities, such as Ashkenazi Jews, primarily Eastern European immigrants. He is the son of Doris, an Iraqi-born woman who moved to Israel in adulthood, and Rachamim Mizrachi, a native Israeli, working class parents who both lost their eyesight at two. Nissim has two older sisters. Mizrachi earned a B.A. in Philosophy & Sociology and an M.A. summa cum laude in Sociology and Anthropology, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with the assistance of the Fulbright Program, and a postdoc at Harvard University. In 2016, he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been teaching in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University since 2001, was appointed senior lecturer with tenure in 2006, and has served as a full professor since 2024. He served as head of the department from 2013 to 2016. He is a senior research fellow and head of the Challenge of Shared Life Cluster at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and the Shaharit Institute. Mizrachi won the Sociology of Culture's Clifford Geertz Award for Best Article from the American Sociological Association in 2008; the Louis Guttman Award for Best Article from the Israel Sociological Society in 2013 and the rector’s prize for excellence in teaching at Tel Aviv University.
Family Nissim Mizrachi is married to Iris, an ophthalmologist at Sheba Medical Center, and has three daughters.
Mizrachi’s Research Mizrachi researched two main fields: from the beginning of his academic life until approximately 2009, he studied the correlation between epistemology and social practice, especially psychosomatic medicine, in modern medicine. Since 2009, he has dedicated his studies to the sociology of liberalism and human rights, morality, ethnicity, and social difference. He focused on the mismatch between the liberal-progressive universal philosophical view and the social particularity of its advocates and adversaries.
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