Simha Assaf

Simha Assaf was born in 1889 in Lyuban

Simha Assaf was born Simha Osovsky in 1889 in Lyuban, near Bobruisk in the Minsk province of the Russian Empire. He first studied with his grandfather and local teachers. He later studied at the Slutsk yeshiva under Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer and at the Telz yeshiva from 1905 to 1908.

He married the daughter of the rabbi of Lyuban and received rabbinic ordination. He served for a time as a rabbi in his town and later taught in Minsk. He then headed a yeshiva in Odessa until the Bolsheviks closed it, and after a year in Paris and a year in Germany he moved to the Land of Israel in 1921.

He taught at the Mizrachi teachers' seminary in Jerusalem and, from the founding of the Hebrew University in 1925, lectured there on Geonic and rabbinic literature. He became dean of the humanities in 1943 and rector in 1949. He had no formal academic degree but wrote many books, mostly on the Geonic period.

In July 1948 he was appointed to the Supreme Court to represent religious circles, though he had no formal legal training. A law was passed to approve the appointment retroactively, known as the Rabbi Assaf Law. He wrote the Miller ruling, a key case in inheritance law.

He gave a daily Talmud lesson on Kol Israel radio and was active in the Mizrachi movement. He was a member of the Hebrew Language Committee from 1926. He died in 1953 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot.