Reuven Margolios

Reuven Margaliot (born Lemberg, 1889; died 1971) was a scholar of Talmud, Kabbalah, and medieval Jewish literature, known chiefly for meticulously annotated editions of classic texts. Though ordained, he did not take a pulpit; in Lemberg he kept a bookshop before settling in Tel Aviv in the mid-1930s, where he later directed the Rambam Library. Across some five dozen volumes he supplied notes and source-tracing to works such as the Zohar (his Nitzotzei Zohar glosses), Sefer Chasidim, and the responsa She'elot u-Teshuvot min ha-Shamayim attributed to Yaakov of Marvège, and he edited the record of Nachmanides' 1263 Barcelona disputation with Pablo Christiani. His own studies include Malachei Elyon, a survey of angels in rabbinic and mystical sources, the commentary Margaliyot HaYam on tractate Sanhedrin, and biographies of figures such as the Maharsha and the Or HaChaim. In 1957 he received the Israel Prize.