Amos Hakham

Amos Hakham was born in 1921 in Jerusalem

Amos Hakham was born in Jerusalem in 1921, the only son of Dr. Noah Hakham and Naomi Shapiro. His father founded the Mizrachi teachers seminary in Jerusalem and taught Bible there, and his mother was a pharmacist and medic in Kinneret and Degania. A fall in infancy left him with speech difficulties, so his father taught him at home.

His mother died when he was 15, and his father died when he was 22. He then worked as a clerk at the Institute for the Blind in Jerusalem for meals and pocket money. He passed his matriculation exams, tutored blind students and helped produce a Braille Bible.

In 1958 neighbors in Sha'arei Hesed urged him to enter the Bible Contest. He won the national contest on 4 August 1958, broadcast live on radio, and received the prize from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. On 19 August he also won the international contest in Jerusalem.

He later studied Bible at the Hebrew University and became a Bible scholar. He wrote 8 volumes of the Da'at Miqra commentary and articles for the Encyclopaedia Hebraica. He received the Rav Kook Prize for Torah literature in 1984.

He married a few years after the contest, and Ben-Gurion attended the wedding. His son Noah was born in 1963. In his final years he lived in Efrat, and he died on 2 August 2012.