David Weiss Halivni

David Weiss Halivni was born in 1927 in Kobyletska Polyana

David Weiss was born in 1927 in Kobyletska Poliana, in Carpathian Ruthenia, then part of Czechoslovakia. His parents separated when he was 4, and he grew up with his grandfather, Rabbi Isaiah Weiss, in Sighet, Romania. He began studying Talmud with his grandfather at 5 and was ordained as a rabbi at 15.

In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz with his grandfather, mother and sister, and then sent to the camps at Gross-Rosen, Wolfsberg and Mauthausen. He was the only member of his family to survive. He later changed his name to Halivni, the Hebrew word for white.

He reached the United States in 1947 and studied at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin under Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. He studied philosophy at Brooklyn College and New York University and earned a doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1957. He studied for many years with Rabbi Saul Lieberman.

He taught Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary and left in 1983 during the dispute over ordaining women. He then helped found the Union for Traditional Judaism and became a professor at Columbia University in 1984. His method separated the named statements of the Talmud from its anonymous layer, which he attributed to later editors he called Stammaim.

In 2005 he retired from Columbia and moved to Jerusalem. He taught at the Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University until his death in 2022. He received the Israel Prize in 2008.