David Weiss Halivni

David Halivni, Israeli-American scholar of the Talmud (photo Tzahi Lerner, 2009)

Halivni David Weiss ( Hebrew : ), born in 1926, is a rabbi American - Israeli , a survivor of the Holocaust , considered an authority in the field of research on the Talmud.

Biographical Elements

David Weiss was born in 1926 or probably in 1927 in the small town of Koboletzka Poljana in Ruthenia Carpathian, then Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine ). His parents separated when he was four and grew up in Sighet , Romania with her mother. It is quickly recognized as a prodigy in learning the Talmud. At fourteen, he obtained an ordination of a rabbi.

Like all Jews of the city, he was deported in 1944 by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Released in 1945, he was the only survivor of his family. In 1947 he emigrated to the United States with a group of young orphaned refugees. Shortly after, he meets the Talmudic scholar Saul Lieberman , who became his master. Student time in Yeshiva Chaim Berlin in New York , where his virtuosity in the Talmud is known, he decided to pursue secular university in addition to his Talmudic studies. He obtained an MA in philosophy and a doctorate in Talmud that supports the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, an institution affiliated with the conservative movement ^, .

It changes a little later his name Halivni, a Hebrew translation of Weiss (meaning "white"). Desiring to abandon his original surname Weiss that was the name of a guard of a concentration camp where he was detained, he decided to keep it in memory of his grandfather Talmudist Yeshayahu Weiss, who had taught Talmud at Sighet.

For thirty years, David Halivni continued his teaching and research on the Babylonian Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Following disagreements with the new leadership of the institution on the decision processes of reforms that it hopes will be adopted, he left in 1985 the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was appointed professor at Columbia University in New York where he taught until 2005 when he retired. David Halivni now lives in Israel, where he continued his teaching and research.

Halivni and Elie Wiesel , all deportees are still friends today.

Halivni David is the author of a seminal work in Hebrew, the work of a life devoted to the Talmud, entitled ^,

Thesis and Methodology

The thesis of David Halivni stated as history is that most of the Talmudic text of the Babylonian Talmud is the work of anonymous sages he calls Stammam (from the Aramaic , "anonymous", by analogy with the expression michnaque ), who labored from the 6th century, after the Amoraim. During the period tannaque and amoraque , only the orders of law were passed official form (either orally). Discussions were left to the individual memory of the sages who had participated in the discussions. The Stammam did not have sources in their entirety and devoted their work to rebuild and restore the deliberations and discussions of the sages who preceded them.

A key element of the work of David Halivni is thus to distinguish (halakhah psouqah, arrested by law) of (Chaqle ve-Taria, discussions) in the Talmudic text. The organization of the Gemara in sougyoth is the fruit of labor Stammam. In particular, the discussions in a given sugya are not always wise between contemporary and often reconstructed posterior Stammam.

In the last volume of his work-or Meqorot Messorot (published in 2008), David Halivni is the period of activity Stammam between the 6th century and 8th century, between Amoraim and Geonim. In this perspective, Saboram Stammam are the last, when the entire Talmud is already close to the form we know it.

Theology

Controversies

Books

Hebrew

• Bibliography
  • The Talmud as Law or literature - an analysis of David W. Halivni's Mekorot umasorot (English), by Irwin H. Top Published in 1982, Bet Shaar Press (New York).

  References

  1. cf. Memoirs of David Weiss Halivni - The Book and the Sword.
  2. Article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (English) - a Talmudic Encyclopedia alive
  3. Article from The New York Times (English) - a life in the Talmud, New York Times, September 11, 1977 (Israel Shenker).
  4. Official Site Award Israel (Hebrew) - the winner CV
  5. Official Site of the price Israel (Hebrew) - Deliberate

  External Links

  • (En) text summarizing the research of David Halivni published in Cahiers du Judaism
  • Portal of Jewish culture and Judaism
  • Portal of the Second World War

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