Ezra Zion Melamed

Ezra Zion Melamed was born in 1903 in Shiraz

Melamed was born in Shiraz, Persia, in 1903. He came to the Land of Israel with his mother in 1907, about a year after his father, Rabbi Rahamim Melamed Cohen, who served as rabbi of the Persian Jewish community in Jerusalem. In 1926 he married Shoshana Rotman, whom he met at Esperanto classes, in a ceremony led by Rabbi Kook.

He studied at several Torah institutions in Jerusalem and was among the first students of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University. He received a master's degree there in 1933 and a doctorate in 1941 for his study of tannaitic halakhic midrashim in the Babylonian Talmud.

He taught at schools and teacher seminaries in Jerusalem. In 1964 he became an associate professor of Bible at the Hebrew University, the first Jew of Middle Eastern origin to reach the rank of professor in Israel, and became a full professor in 1971. His work covered the Bible, the Talmud and the Land of Israel, and included dictionaries of Aramaic and Esperanto.

After his father's death he succeeded him as rabbi of the Persian Jewish community in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language from 1956. After retiring in 1972 he also taught at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University, and he died in 1994.