Adin Steinsaltz

Adin Steinsaltz was born in 1937 in Jerusalem

Steinsaltz was born in Jerusalem on 11 July 1937 to a secular family. His parents, Avraham and Leah, came to the Land of Israel in 1924. His father was a communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and later joined Lehi.

As a teenager he became religious under the influence of Chabad rabbis in Jerusalem. He studied mathematics and physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and also studied at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Lod. At 24 he became a school principal.

In 1965 he founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications. His Hebrew edition of the Babylonian Talmud adds a translation from Aramaic and a commentary, and was completed in 2010. He wrote about 60 books, including The Thirteen Petalled Rose on Kabbalah.

He founded yeshivas including Makor Chaim and Tekoa, and worked with Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union, where he founded the Jewish University. In 1991, on the advice of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, he changed his family name to Even-Israel.

In 2016 he suffered a stroke and lost the ability to speak. He died in Jerusalem on 7 August 2020 from pneumonia. He was survived by his wife Sarah and three children.