Ephraim Urbach

Ephraim Urbach was born in 1912 in Włocławek

Urbach was born in 1912 in Włocławek, Poland, to a hasidic family with Zionist ties. He received a traditional education in a heder and also attended the Jewish gymnasium in his town.

In 1930 he began studying at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau and was ordained as a rabbi in 1934. After the Nazis came to power, he went to Rome for doctoral studies under Moshe David Cassuto and wrote on the Jewish-Christian debate in the Middle Ages. From 1935 to 1938 he lectured at the Breslau seminary.

He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in October 1938 and was the only member of his family to leave Europe. His parents and sisters were murdered in the Holocaust. During World War II he served for four years as a chaplain in the British army.

He later directed the Ma'aleh secondary school in Jerusalem and joined the Hebrew University faculty in 1953. He served as president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and was active in public life. He was a candidate for president of Israel in 1973 but was not elected.

Urbach died in 1991 at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem after a long illness. He is buried on the Mount of Olives.