David Weiss Halivni (M / Slovakia, 1927), Holocaust survivor
David Weiss Halivni (M / Slovakia, 1927), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Ruthenia> <Romania> <Auschwitz>
Biography
David Weiss was born in the small town of Kobyletska Poliana (Кобилецька Поляна, Poiana Cobilei, Gergyanliget) in Carpathian Ruthenia, then in Czechoslovakia (now in Rakhiv Raion, in Ukraine). His parents separated when he was 4 years old, and he grew up in the home of his grandfather, a Talmudic scholar in Sighet, Romania. His grandfather began teaching him at age five, and he was regarded as an Illui; he received semikha (Rabbinic ordination) at age 15.
During the Holocaust, at the age of 16 he was deported to Auschwitz. After a week he was transferred to a forced labor camp, Gross-Rosen, then to AL Wolfsberg, and later to Mauthausen concentration camp and was the only member of his family to survive.
After the war he moved to the United States at the age of 18, was placed in a Jewish orphanage and completed high school and then earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Brooklyn College, and a Master's Degree in philosophy from NYU; he wrote his Doctorate in Talmud at JTS.
Halivni served as Littauer Professor of Talmud and Classical Rabbinics in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. In July 2005, he retired from Columbia University and moved to Israel where he teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University.