Religionעדה רפפורט-אלברט

Ada Rapoport-Albert

Ada Rapoport-Albert was an Israeli-British scholar of Hasidism, Sabbateanism and gender in Jewish history, who taught at University College London.

1945 to 2020Research on HasidismStudies of SabbateanismGender in Jewish history

Born: 26 October 1945, Tel Aviv
Died: 18 June 2020, London
Occupation: Judaic scholar, historian, university teacher

Ada Rapoport-Albert was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv

Ada Rapoport-Albert was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 to Zalman and Alma Rapoport. Her mother was a pianist born in Sofia, Bulgaria, who studied in Vienna. Her father came from Berdichev and worked as an agronomist, later serving as an agricultural adviser for the Foreign Ministry in Brussels.

After her army service she moved to Britain in 1965 and studied at University College London. She finished her first degree in Jewish history in 1968. She studied with Joseph Weiss and, after his death in 1969, with Chimen Abramsky, and completed her doctorate in 1974.

She taught at Oxford and then became an associate professor of Jewish history at UCL. In 2002 she became head of its department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and she held visiting posts at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and other institutions. Her research covered early Hasidism, Breslov and Chabad Hasidism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, gender and the Haskalah.

She retired in 2012 but kept up her research. She died in London on 18 June 2020.