Rabbi Prof. David Weiss-Halivni wins Israel Prize 2008

Prof. David Halivni has won the Israel Prize for research into the Talmud for 2008, the Education Ministry announced Tuesday.

Halivni has written seven volumes of critical research on the Talmud. He has taught at Columbia University in New York for many years and made aliya to Jerusalem in 2005. Halivni currently also teaches at both Bar-Ilan University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Halivni was born in the Ukraine in 1927. He received smicha at the age of 15 and was the sole survivor of the Holocaust from his family.

According to the judges, "Prof. David Halivni is one of the premier researchers into the Talmud of our generation. He merges the old with the new pioneering new methods of research," the judges, Profs. Daniel Sperber, Shlomo Naeh, and Aharon Kirschenbaum said.

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מזל טוב!

Download and read the very interesting New York Times Magazine profile "A Life in the Talmud," by Israel Shenker, 9.11.77: here.