Menahem Stern, Leading Historian on Second Temple Period, Murdered in Jerusalem
Professor Menahem Stern of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was stabbed to death as he walked to the university library on June 22, 1989. The murder occurred on a path he had walked every day for many years. At press-time, the identity and motive of the killer or killers still eludes police, though immediately after the killing police said that terrorism was the most likely cause of the attack.
Professor Moshe David Herr, a close friend and colleague of Stern, said he did not think the murderer was anyone who knew Stern. Herr added that Stern “was a man without enemies, the last person one would imagine being found in a violent context.”
A Lithuanian Jew, Stern was born in 1925 in Bialystok, then part of Poland. He was brought to Israel in 1938 and attended a Tel Aviv high school before going to Hebrew University. Stern became a member of the university faculty even before receiving his doctorate in 1960. In addition to his knowledge of Hebrew and classical languages, Stern was fluent in German and French and had taught himself Italian and Dutch, giving him access to a large portion of European literature and culture.
The publication of his magnum opus, the three-volume Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, occupied over ten years, from 1974 to 1984. During this period, he received the Israel Prize in Jewish History (1977) and the Wiznitzer Prize (1981) for the year’s best book in the field.
Stern’s work-in-progress was intended to be a definitive history of the Jews from the period of Alexander the Great to the destruction of the Second Temple. According to Herr, Stern said that the first part is nearly ready for publication.
Summing up Stern’s achievements, Herr said, “He was a man of enormous erudition, enormous knowledge in Jewish studies, from the Bible and Talmud through the medieval and modern period, as well as in classical literature, philology and history. He was certainly the greatest historian of the Jewish people in the Second Temple period in this generation.”
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Washington Post Reprints Bible Review Article
The Washington Post reprinted an article from Bible Review in its Sunday, March 26, 1989 edition. The article, entitled “Eve and Adam—Is a Feminist Reading Possible?” by Pamela Milne of the University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, originally appeared in the June 1988 issue of Bible Review.
We are proud to be probably the only Bible magazine with articles so fascinating and so well written that they are of interest to the audience of a major metropolitan newspaper. Congratulations to Professor Milne.
Menahem Stern, Leading Historian on Second Temple Period, Murdered in Jerusalem
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