Ephraim E. Urbach

Ephraim E. Urbach was born into a Hasidic family in Bialystok. He was ordained as a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and also earned a doctorate from the University of Rome. In 1938, Urbach moved to Israel, serving in World War II as a chaplain in the British Army. He taught at the Hebrew University, becoming professor of Talmud and Midrash in 1958; his academic focus was on the history of halakhah and of rabbinic thought. Urbach served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and earned the 1955 Israel Prize for Jewish studies and the Bialik Prize, in 1983, for Jewish thought.