The Humanities Division brings together leading Israeli researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The head of the Division is Prof. Avner Holtzman.

The Division's activities include establishing and maintaining interdisciplinary forums; organizing international symposia, seminars, and lectures; and exploring various issues in the humanities and social sciences. The Division also promotes activities suggested by its members and supports scholars starting out on their academic careers.

The Division works extensively to strengthen the standing of the humanities. It encourages the work of interdisciplinary forums that bring together scholars from different fields and academic institutions, including the Forum on Late Antiquity, the Forum for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions, and the Silk Roads Forum.

Additionally, the Division maintains a Young Scholars Forum in the Humanities and Social Sciences, for which 12 newcomer scholars are chosen each year. Within the Forum, each group focuses on a particular broad theme and meets for academic discussion, with participants approaching the topic from their different disciplinary perspectives. Each group is led by an Academy member whose area of expertise corresponds to the theme. A Forum group operates for a period of one to two years, depending on the decision of the group and its leader.

In order to perform its duties – to nurture and promote scientific activity, and to advise the government on issues relating to scientific research and planning – the Academy occasionally appoints committees that examine various research areas and then issue public reports on their findings and conclusions. A committee on the state of Holocaust studies in Israeli academia, established in 2017 under the leadership of Academy member Prof. Israel Bartal, published its Report on the State of Holocaust Studies in Research Universities and Colleges in Israel in 2020. In 2023, the Academy published a report written by the Committee for the Advancement of the Humanities, chaired by Prof. Margalit Finkelberg, Vice President of the Academy.

In 2009, as the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities celebrated its jubilee year, the Academy's Council established a series of annual lectures in the humanities and social sciences named for the Academy's first president, Prof. Martin Buber. In keeping with Buber's scholarly path, the lectures in the series touch on a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and target a broad audience of scholars and laypersons.

The Division organizes seminars honoring senior Academy members and commemorating those who have passed away.

Since 2009, the Division has worked with the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to organize the German–Israeli Frontiers of the Humanities Symposia (GISFOH), a series of interdisciplinary conferences in the humanities, each involving fifty young scholars from Israel and Germany. The symposia aim to bring together outstanding young researchers from different fields and challenge them to think and explore beyond their particular disciplinary boundaries, to nourish each other's work and perspectives and create channels for the exchange of academic knowledge.

In collaboration with Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the Academy supports the publication of critical editions of Hebrew texts composed in medieval Germany.