Asher Weill

Weill started working for Oxford University Press in 1955 as editor of books for English language teaching, and was subsequently responsible for overseas publicity for educational books.

In 1959 Weill was appointed sales director and subsequently director of publishing for the Israel Program for Scientific Translations (IPST), then part of the Prime Minister's Office. The program used the scientific and language knowledge of immigrants to Israel to translate scientific publications from the Soviet bloc with which the scientific world in the west was not familiar. During that time he founded and served as the publisher of Israel Universities Press, a publishing imprint of IPST. He introduced western publishing standards to Israel, including graphically-designed hard covers and a standard sales price.

In 1969 he became the managing director and publisher of Weidenfeld and Nicolson Jerusalem. That was closed down in the wake of the recession that hit Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In 1975, Weill became the founder and partner with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper of Edanim Publishers, a Hebrew-language publishing house. He remained in partnership with Yediot Aharonot until 1993. During the years 1969–1993, Weill was the publisher of a very large number of Israel's leaders, among them, Chaim Herzog, Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Golda Meir, Isser Harel, Yigael Yadin, Ezer Weizman, Abba Eban, Yitzhak Shamir, Adin Steinsaltz, Natan Sharansky and Teddy Kollek, as well as international figures, among them, Anwar Sadat, Henry Kissinger and Nancy and Ronald Reagan.

In 1961, Weill was a founding director of the Jerusalem International Book Fair and remained on the board for some 50 years. From 1967–2002, he bi-annually published the Israel Book Trade Directory, and in 2001, wrote and published a history of the Fair. From 1962–1975, he served as chair of the Israel Export Institute's Book and Printing Center.

From 1993–2001, Weill developed and taught a course, The Theory and Practice of Publishing, at Israel's Open University.

In 1981, Weill was appointed editor of the quarterly magazine Ariel: The Israel Review of Arts and Letters, published by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, with special editions in many other languages, among them Chinese, Japanese and Italian. Ariel was the main channel for Israel to showcase to the world its rich cultural life. The magazine was closed down by the ministry in 2003 as a cost-cutting move.

From 1986–1991, Weill worked as director of the Press Division of the World Zionist Organization, in which capacity he was the editor of the monthly news magazine, Israel Scene; the World Zionist Press Service, Kivunim, Sabra, Jerusalem Update, and other WZO publications.

Weill has written, edited or contributed to a large variety of additional publications, among them Encyclopaedia Judaica, Insight Guide to Israel and to Jerusalem, Political Dictionary of the Middle East, Encyclopaedia of Zionism, Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture, Biography of Jewish History and World Biography of Jewish Women.

Since 1995, Weill has been the convener and Israeli coordinator of The Anglo-Israel Colloquium; a biennial gathering of Israeli and British leaders on a selected topic, and continues to work as an editor and publisher of academic and non-academic material.

Since 2010, Weill has been responsible for all the English-language material of Limmud FSU, an adaptation for the Russian-speaking Jewish community of the Limmud peer-led Jewish educational programming that started in UK in 1980. Limmud FSU reaches out to Jews throughout the former Soviet Union, as well as to Russian-speaking Jews in Israel, USA, Canada, Australia and other countries.