Scienceחיים שירמן

Jefim Hayyim Schirmann

Hayyim Schirmann was an Israeli scholar of medieval Hebrew poetry of Spain and Italy and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

1904 to 1981Research on medieval Hebrew poetryHebrew Poetry of Spain and ProvenceEditing the journal Tarbiz

Born: 19 October 1904, Kyiv
Died: 15 June 1981
Occupation: historian, university teacher, literary editor, Hebraist
Education: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Jefim Hayyim Schirmann was born in 1904 in Kyiv

Schirmann was born in Kyiv in 1904 to an established, observant family. Besides a Russian gymnasium education, his father made sure he studied Hebrew and violin. As a boy he discovered Hebrew poetry of Spain and translated a poem by Yehuda Halevi into Russian.

In 1920 his family moved to Germany after the October Revolution. He studied Semitic linguistics at the University of Berlin and violin at the Berlin music academy. In 1930 he submitted a doctorate on the Hebrew translation of the Maqamat of al-Hariri.

He worked at the Schocken Institute for the Study of Hebrew Poetry from its founding. In 1934 he left Nazi Germany and moved to the Land of Israel. In 1942 he began lecturing at the Hebrew University and became a professor there in 1954.

He edited the journal Tarbiz from 1955 to 1969 and was elected to the Academy of the Hebrew Language and to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In 1967 he and Ezra Fleischer started a project to catalog poetry from the Cairo Geniza. He retired from teaching in 1968 and died in Paris in 1981.