22 Facts About Saul Lieberman

Saul Lieberman served as Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for over 40 years, and for many years was dean of the Harry Fischel Institute in Israel and president of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Saul Lieberman studied Talmudic philology and Greek language and literature at the Hebrew University.

Saul Lieberman taught at the Mizrachi Teachers Seminary, and from 1935 was dean of the Harry Fischel Institute for Talmudic Research in Jerusalem.

Saul Lieberman died on March 23,1983, while flying to Jerusalem for Passover.

In 1929, Saul Lieberman published Al ha-Yerushalmi, in which he suggested ways of emending corruptions in the text of the Jerusalem Talmud and offered variant readings to the text of the tractate of Sotah.

Saul Lieberman published the four-volume Tosefeth Rishonim, a commentary on the entire Tosefta with textual corrections based on manuscripts, early printings, and quotations found in early authorities.

Years later, Saul Lieberman returned to the systematic elucidation of the Tosefta.

Saul Lieberman undertook the publication of the Tosefta text, based on manuscripts and accompanied by brief explanatory notes, and of an extensive commentary called Tosefta ki-Fshutah.

Saul Lieberman edited a variant version of Midrash Debarim Rabbah.

Saul Lieberman edited the hitherto unpublished Tosefta commentary Hasdei David by David Pardo on the order Tohorot; the first part of this work appeared in 1970.

Saul Lieberman contributed numerous studies to scholarly publications as well as notes to books of fellow scholars.

Saul Lieberman published a heretofore unknown Midrashic work that he painstakingly pieced together by deriving its text from an anti-Jewish polemic written by Raymond Martini, and various published lectures of Medieval Rabbis.

Saul Lieberman's work was published while he headed Machon Harry Fishel.

However, ten years earlier, in an article published shortly after his death, Saul Lieberman strongly criticized Neusner's lack of scholarship in the latter's translation of three tractates of the Yerushalmi.

Meir Bar-Ilan, Saul Lieberman's nephew, accused Neusner of being biased against Saul Lieberman due to "a personal issue".

Saul Lieberman insisted that all services at the Seminary's Stein Hall, where he prayed daily, have a mechitzah even though the great majority of Conservative synagogues did not.

Additionally, Saul Lieberman saw to it that the Seminary synagogue in which he prayed used an Orthodox prayer book, rather than siddurim produced by the Rabbinical Assembly.

The Lieberman clause is a clause included in a ketubah, created by and named after Saul Lieberman, that stipulates that divorce will be adjudicated by a modern bet din in order to prevent the problem of the agunah, a woman not allowed to remarry religiously because she had never been granted a religious divorce.

Saul Lieberman was the daughter of Rabbi Laizer Rabinowitz, the rabbi of Minsk, and granddaughter of Yerucham Yehuda Leib Perelmann.

Saul Lieberman studied at Hebrew University and received a Masters degree in Talmudic studies and ancient Palestiniology.

Judith Saul Lieberman studied at Hunter College and then at Columbia University under Professor Moses Hadas and Professor Muzzey.

Saul Lieberman was an honorary member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.