David Sklare was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and studied at Yale University (B.A.) and Harvard University (Ph.D.). Together with Haggai Ben-Shammai, he co-founded the Center for the Study of Judeo-Arabic Culture and Literature of the Ben-Zvi Institute and served as its director for twenty years (1995-2015). Some of the projects undertaken by the Center included cataloging the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts in the Firkovitch collection (unfortunately not completed) and the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts found in the various collections stemming from the genizah of the Ben-Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. Other projects involved the reconstruction and translation of Judeo-Arabic legal works from the Gaonic period and early Spain and investigating the impression Mu’tazilite Kalām theology made on works of Jewish law.
He is currently a researcher at the Hebrew University and at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München. His field of research is Judeo-Arabic literature and culture, including legal literature and theory, theology, philosophy, biblical exegesis and Jewish-Muslim polemics. A current focus of interest of his is the transition of Middle Eastern cultures from late antiquity to the early medieval period.