Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein

Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein was born in 1923 in Seesen

Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein was born on 1 August 1923 in Seesen, Germany. He was the youngest son of Felix Kopfstein, a lawyer who died while fleeing Nazi persecution. He went to a Jewish secondary school in Berlin.

In 1939 he escaped to Palestine with the Youth Aliyah and first lived on a kibbutz. He later joined the Jewish Settlement Police, a force recruited by the Haganah.

He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968. His thesis studied the Vulgate as a translation of the Hebrew Bible by Jerome.

At the University of Haifa he directed the Old Testament Seminary and chaired the Department of Bible Studies. He was also a research associate of the Hebrew University Bible Project, in charge of the Latin versions. His work on biblical philology and the semantics of Old Testament language appeared in journals and biblical encyclopedias.

In 1984 he was acting rector of the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg. He later became a professor emeritus and died in 2013. The city of Braunschweig honored him in its memorial stone project for victims of National Socialism.