Scienceמנחם שטרן

Menahem Stern

Menahem Stern was an Israeli historian of the Second Temple period who won the Israel Prize in 1977 and was murdered in Jerusalem in 1989.

1925 to 1989Second Temple period historyGreek and Latin Authors on JewsThe 1977 Israel Prize

Born: 5 March 1925, Białystok
Died: 22 June 1989, Jerusalem
Occupation: historian
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Menahem Stern was born in 1925 in Białystok

Menahem Stern was born in 1925 in Białystok, Poland. His father was a misnaged and his mother came from a Hasidic family. As a child he studied Hebrew and religious texts, and later gained a general education that included Latin.

In 1938 he moved to Palestine with his parents by way of Vienna. He studied at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and finished at Geulah high school in Tel Aviv in 1942. After a year on a kibbutz he studied history and classics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning his M.A. in 1950.

He married Hava Brenner, niece of the writer Yosef Haim Brenner, and studied at Oxford from 1952 to 1954. He began teaching at the Hebrew University, received his Ph.D. in 1960 and became a full professor in 1971. He edited works on Jewish papyri and the Hasmonean revolt, and collected Greek and Latin writings on Jews.

He headed the Historical Society of Israel, helped found the Zalman Shazar Center and edited the journal Zion. On June 22, 1989, he was stabbed to death in the Valley of the Cross in Jerusalem while walking to the national library. One of his killers was arrested in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison.