Michael Coop­er made aliyah from the US in 1966, stud­ied at Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty- Jerusalem, fol­lowed by Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical School. After grad­u­at­ing and eleven years in Israel, he returned to US to spe­cial­ize in pedi­atric car­di­ol­o­gy fol­lowed by forty years of prac­tice which includ­ed vol­un­teer med­ical mis­sions in Israel. He began writ­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion in 1995. The Rabbi’s Knight is his fourth novel.