Éliane Amado Lévy-Valensi (1919–2006)

Eliane Amado Levy-Valensi was born to a Jewish family in Marseille, France, where she spent her childhood. She completed her studies in philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence. In 1942, she married Max Amado, a business lawyer. Her mother was deported to Auschwitz during World War II. In 1948, she passed the civil service exam (agrégation) for teaching positions in higher education, and taught philosophy for many years at the Sorbonne in Paris. She became a member of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). After a divorce from her first husband, she remarried to Claude Veil, a psychiatrist; this marriage also ended in divorce. In 1968, she emigrated to Israel, where she taught philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. She became a leading figure in French-Jewish thought and culture, and was the author of numerous books on psychology and psychoanalysis.