Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer

Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer was born in 1927 in Poland

Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer was born in Poland in 1927 and grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She immigrated to Israel in 1935.

She began studying at the Hebrew University in the early 1950s and was a student of Gershom Scholem. She also served as his teaching assistant and edited several of his lecture series. She earned her master's degree in 1958 and her doctorate in 1966.

Her early work dealt with Sabbateanism, and later she focused on Hasidism, especially the Maggid Dov Ber of Mezeritch and his students. Her doctorate became the book Hasidism as Mysticism, and she edited the Maggid's book Maggid Devarav LeYaakov. She also wrote about Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and wrote entries on Hasidism for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

She became a full professor in the Department of Jewish Thought in 1978 and received the Kugel Prize in 1970. In the early 1990s she led a project to publish a critical edition of the Zohar in 43 volumes, which ended after her death.

She died in 1992 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. Her library, including manuscript copies of the Zohar and of Rabbi Kook, joined the Gershom Scholem Collection at the National Library of Israel.