Shmuel Safrai

(Redirected from S. Safrai) Israeli historian

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Shmuel Safrai
Prof. Safrai, August 1993
Born	(1919-06-18)June 18, 1919 Warsaw, Poland
Died	July 16, 2003(2003-07-16) (aged 84)
Nationality	Israel
Children	Ze'ev Safrai Chana Safrai
Awards	Jerusalem Prize (1986) Israel Prize (2002)

Academic background
Doctoral advisor	Gedaliah Alon
Academic work
Discipline	Jewish History
Institutions	Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Doctoral students	Yisrael Friedman Isaiah Gafni

Shmuel Safrai (Hebrew: שמואל ספראי) (June 18, 1919 – July 16, 2003) was Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at Hebrew University and laurate of the Israel Prize for Land of Israel studies for 2002.

Biography

Safrai born in 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to Land of Israel at the age of three (1922). He lived in the Etz Chaim neighborhood of Jerusalem during his childhood and youth. He studied at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva for one year, and at the Mizrachi Teachers' Training College in Jerusalem for two years. From 1951 to 1955 he was a member of Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu.

During the 1940s and 1950s, he pursued his studies at the Hebrew University, earning a doctorate in 1960 for his thesis, which focused on pilgrimage practices during the Second Temple period. By the late 1960s, Safrai was appointed as a professor at the Hebrew University, and in 1978, he achieved the rank of full professor. Since then, he has been actively engaged in teaching both within and outside the university, alongside his prolific contributions to scholarly literature through over eighty articles and twelve books.

His son, Prof. Ze'ev Safrai, is a historian in the Department for Israel Studies in Bar Ilan University. His daughter, Prof. Hanna Safrai, was a researcher in the field of Chazal literature and a religious feminist activist.

In 1993, Yad Ben Zvi published a volume of studies in honor of Shmuel Safrai, titled Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple, Mishna and Talmud Period. Edited by Isaiah Gafni, Menachem Stern, and Aharon Oppenheimer, the book features contributions from prominent scholars, including David Flusser, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Daniel Sperber, Uriel Rappaport and others.