Baruch Podolsky

Baruch Podolsky was born in 1940 in Moscow

Podolsky was born in Moscow in 1940 to a Jewish family. His parents were teachers with an interest in Jewish culture. He learned Yiddish from his mother, and his father taught him to read Hebrew.

He studied Hindi at Moscow State University from 1956 to 1958. In 1958 he and his parents were arrested over contacts with the Israeli embassy and the study of Hebrew, and he spent 5 years in a labor camp in Mordovia. In 1967 he was sentenced again to 2 years for Zionist activity.

In 1971 he moved to Israel with his wife, Lydia. At Tel Aviv University he earned a bachelor's degree in 1974 and a master's degree in 1976. His doctorate, on the history of the Amharic language, was completed in 1985.

He taught Semitic linguistics at Tel Aviv University, mainly Amharic and Old Ethiopian. From 1992 he gave Hebrew lessons on the radio for immigrants and edited Hebrew-Russian and Russian-Hebrew dictionaries. He also wrote a Hebrew grammar in Russian and compiled Amharic dictionaries.

He lived mainly in Holon and died of cancer in 2011. His Amharic-Hebrew dictionary was published by his wife in 2012.