Josef Schächter

Josef Schächter was born in 1901

Schächter was born in 1901 in Kundrynce, in eastern Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary. He grew up in a Hasidic home devoted to learning. As a youth he studied German, gymnasium subjects and philosophy.

In Vienna he taught Talmud at the Hebrew pedagogical school and later at the Bible Rambam Institute. He was ordained in 1926. He studied philosophy with Moritz Schlick, attended Vienna Circle meetings, and earned a doctorate in 1931 with a dissertation on Nicolai Hartmann.

In 1935 his book Prolegomena to a Critical Grammar appeared in the Vienna Circle's book series. It was shaped by Schlick, Friedrich Waismann and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He also wrote a short introduction to logic in Hebrew.

After the annexation of Austria in 1938, he hid from the Nazis and emigrated to Palestine. He taught at secondary schools in Tel Aviv until 1940 and in Haifa until 1950, and married the teacher Netti Dlugacz in 1943. He was a school superintendent from 1951 to 1952 and later lectured on Bible and Aggadah at the Haifa teachers' seminar.

In the early 1950s a group of his students founded Kibbutz Yodfat in the Galilee to apply his ideas. He served on prize juries and received the Ruppin Prize of the Haifa municipality. He died in Haifa in 1994.