Eliyahu Zini

Eliyahu Zini was born in 1946 in Algeria

Eliyahu Zini was born on 11 August 1946 in Algeria, the eldest child of Rachel and Rabbi Meir Zini, the rabbi of Taharat. His mother survived Auschwitz and met his father, an officer in the Free French Forces, when the camp was liberated.

In 1962 the family moved to Paris, where he finished high school and began studying mathematics at the University of Paris. He studied Torah with Rabbi Shlomo Dahan and earned a second-degree black belt in karate.

He immigrated to Israel in 1970, lived in Bnei Brak and later moved to Haifa. He completed his doctorate in mathematics at the Technion and did postdoctoral work at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He then taught mathematics, Talmud and Jewish philosophy at the Technion.

He received rabbinic ordination in 1979 and became rabbi of the Technion in 1980, a post he left in 2013. From 1982 to 1992 he oversaw holy sites for the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In 2001 he founded Yeshivat Or Vishua, a hesder yeshiva in Haifa.

He has published research on the Geonim and the history of halakha, and translated works by Emmanuel Levinas into Hebrew. He lives in the Neve Sha'anan neighborhood of Haifa with his wife and 8 children.