Toldot HaEmunah HaYisraelit
Jerusalem · 1937
יק
Yehezkel Kaufmann
Yehezkel Kaufmann
1889 CE–1963 CE · Modern · Dunaivtsi
Professor Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889–1963) was a pioneering scholar of the Bible and the history of Israelite religion. Born in Dunaivtsi in the Ukraine and trained in Talmud at Odessa and in philosophy at the University of Bern, he taught for two decades at the Reali School in Haifa before becoming professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1949. In his monumental Toledot HaEmunah HaYisraelit ('The Religion of Israel') he mounted a sweeping challenge to Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis, arguing that Israelite monotheism was an original creation rather than a gradual evolution out of paganism — a thesis that reframed twentieth-century biblical scholarship.
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Stop 1 of 41889–1910Born
DunaivtsiדונייבציPodolia (Ukraine)
What they did here
Born in Dunaivtsi, in the Podolia region of the Ukraine.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Yehezkel Kaufmann’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Zelig Reuven Bangis, Isser Zalman Meltzer, Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, Yechiel Michel Tukatchinsky, Yisrael Zev Mintzberg, Tzvi Pesach Frank, Martin Buber, Jacob Nachum Epstein, Mishpetei Uziel, Aharon Rokeach, Dov Berish Weidenfeld, Zalman Sorotzkin, Yaakov Moshe Charlap, Yechezkel Levenstein, Aryeh Levin, Ezra Attia, Yehuda Ashlag, Brisker Rav
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yehezkel Kaufmann’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.