Adin Steinsaltz

Adin Steinsaltz (1937 to 2020), also known as Adin Even-Israel, was an Israeli rabbi, teacher, author, translator and publisher best known for his edition of the Babylonian Talmud, which gives a running modern Hebrew commentary to make the text learnable and was later translated into English, French, Russian and Spanish. After studying sciences and rabbinical texts he founded several experimental schools and at the age of twenty four became Israel's youngest school principal. In 1965 he founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications, joined the first faculty of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, established yeshivas including Makor Chaim and Tekoa, and founded a Jewish University in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the first degree-granting institution of Jewish studies in the former Soviet Union. He won the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies in 1988.