The Book and the Sword

David Weiss Halivni was born in the Carpathian Mountains of Sighet. At the age of 15 he was ordained and proceeded to teach the prisoners in concentration camps during the Nazi regime. Halivni was a faculty member at the Jewish Theological Seminary prior to joining Columbia University. He is also the former president of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Halivni has published The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction, and is also currently working on Sources and Traditions: A Source Critical Commentary to the Talmud. Among his awards are the Guggenheim and Louis Ginsberg Fellowships, and grants from the Council for Research in the Humanities and the Natuional Endowment for the Humanities. Halivni was also named the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Classical Jewish Civilization at Columbia University.

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