Mordechay Lewy (b. May 15, 1948) is a seasoned Israeli diplomat who served as Israel's Ambassador to the Holy See between May 12, 2008 and July 31, 2012. Twice married and the father of three, Lewy joined the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1975. His nomination as Ambassador to the Holy See in May 2008 followed postings to Bonn, and Berlin, where he served as the first Consul General after the Unification from 1991 to 1994. In 2000 he returned there as the embassy DCM. His first ambassadorial assignment was to Bangkok and Phnom Penh during the years 1994 to 1997. Lewy also served as the Jerusalem Municipality Mayor’s Special Advisor for Religious Communities (i.e. Muslim and Christian communities) in a 4-year assignment between 2004 and 2008.
Lewy is a widely published scholar on Jewish-Catholic/Israeli-Vatican relations and in history of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. He has a special interest in turning the taboos into a subject of historical research. He initiated recently an international colloquium "Into the skin" on 5–6 December 2011, dedicated to this topic at the campus of the Urbaniana University affiliated to the Vatican. His interest in medieval history and the history of Jerusalem began during his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After the end of his tenure to the Holy See, he applied for early retirement in order to pursue Doctoral research (towards his PhD) in the field of Medieval Cartography.
Why Shoah and not Holocaust - on Memory and Justified Paranoia
"An unknown view of Mt. Zion monastery by the Flemish old master Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550) as evidence to his pilgrimage to Jerusalem" in Liber Annuus Volume 55, 2005