Shmuel Safrai [1919-2003]
![Shmuel Safrai [1919-2003]](https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/wp-content/uploads/userphoto/20.jpg)
Professor and Rabbi Shmuel Safrai died on July 16, 2003. He was buried the following day in a section of Jerusalem's Har ha-Menuhot Cemetery reserved for faculty of the Hebrew University. His grave is only a few feet from the grave of his close friend and research colleague, Professor David Flusser. Safrai was 84.
Safrai was the last of a scholarly triumvirate that included David Flusser (1917-2000) and Robert Lindsey (1917-1995). Together, the three created a new school of thought, the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research.
A founding member of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research, Safrai was professor emeritus of Jewish History of the Mishnaic and Talmudic Period at the Hebrew University.
Safrai was born in Warsaw in 1919, and at the age of three immigrated to Palestine with his family. He was ordained as a rabbi at the age of twenty at the prestigious Mercaz Harav Yeshivah in Jerusalem. He later received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the fields of Jewish History, Talmud and Bible.
Safrai was the recipient of many literary prizes for his research, including the Jerusalem Prize (1986), and the Israel Prize (2002), the State of Israel's most prestigious honor. He wrote over eighty articles and twelve books, including Pilgrimage in the Period of the Second Temple (in Hebrew), Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef: His Life and Teachings (in Hebrew) and Haggadah of the Sages, co-written with his son Ze'ev Safrai. Shmuel Safrai also edited scholarly volumes including The Jewish People in the First Century (2 vols.), and The Literature of the Sages, Part I.
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