Moshe Bar-Asher is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. He taught Hebrew and Aramaic for many years at the Hebrew University, in the department of the Hebrew Language and in the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures. Professor Bar-Asher held a number of positions in the university: head of the department of the Hebrew Language, head of the Institute of Jewish Studies, chairman of the Appointment Committee, member of the Executive Committee, and member of various other committees. He founded and directed the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures and the Ben-Yehuda Center for the History of the Hebrew Language. He founded two scholarly journals published by the university and edited them for many years: Massorot – Studies in Language Tradition and Jewish Languages, and Mehqarim Belashon – Language Studies. Professor Bar-Asher also founded, together with Devorah Dimant, the Haifa workshop for Qumran research and the scholarly journal Meghillot – Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Moshe Bar-Asher has published fifteen books (with an additional three in print) and over three hundred papers in scholarly journals and has edited eight books. He is the recipient of many academic prizes, among them the Israel Prize (1993), the Ben Zvi Prize for the study of Jewish communities in the East (2001) and the Rothschild Prize for Jewish Studies (2008). He holds doctorates honoris causa from the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris and from Haifa University.