Tsevi Tal

Tsevi Tal was born in 1927 in Tyczyn

Tsevi Tal was born in 1927 in Poland, the youngest child of Haim Teitelbaum and Esther Steinmetz. He grew up in a Hasidic home and studied in a cheder, and his family later moved to Krakow. He immigrated to the Land of Israel with his parents and studied in the first class of the Bnei Akiva yeshiva in Kfar HaRoeh.

He served in the Haganah and the IDF. He studied law in the first class of the law faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, finished in 1953 and became a lawyer in 1954. He worked for 11 years at the S. Horowitz and Co. law firm and opened his own office in 1965.

In 1978 he became a judge of the Jerusalem District Court, where he sat on the panel that convicted John Demjanjuk, who was later acquitted on appeal. In 1994 he was appointed to the Supreme Court and retired in 1997.

In 1998 he became chairman of the estates committee. A 2002 State Comptroller report criticized him over a conflict of interest, and a criminal investigation was closed after finding he acted in good faith. In 1999 he was named head of the Tal Committee, whose recommendations led to the Tal Law.

He was married to Hanna, and they had 6 children. Their son Moshe was killed in 1973 at the end of the Yom Kippur War. Tal died in 2021.