Schalit was born in 1898 in the Galician town of Zolochiv, then in Austria-Hungary (from 1918 to 1939 in Poland and now in Ukraine). He studied at the University of Vienna. In 1929, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine, now Israel. In 1950, he joined the faculty of History Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was appointed a professor in 1959.
