David Weiss-Halivni

David Weiss Halivni (Hebrew: דוד וייס הלבני‎) (born 1927) is a European-born American-Israeli rabbi, scholar in the domain of Jewish Sciences and professor of Talmud.

David Weiss was born in the small town of Kobyletska Poliana (Кобилецька Поляна, Poiana Cobilei, Gergyanliget) in Carpathian Ruthenia, then in Czechoslovakia (now in Rakhiv Raion, in Ukraine). His parents separated when he was 4 years old, and he grew up in the home of his grandfather, a Talmud scholar in Sighet, Romania. During the Holocaust, at the age of 16 he was deported to Auschwitz. After a week he was transferred to a forced labor camp, Gross-Rosen, then to AL Wolfsberg, and later to Mauthausen camp and was the only member of his family to survive.

When he arrived in the United States at the age of 18, he was placed in a Jewish orphanage where he created a stir by challenging the kashrut of the institution since the supervising rabbi did not have a beard and, more importantly, was not fluent in the commentaries of the Pri Megadim by Rabbi Yoseph Te'omim. This was a standard for Rabbis in Europe. A social worker introduced him to Saul Lieberman, a leading Talmudist at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York, who recognized his brilliance and took him under his wing. Weiss studied with Lieberman for many years at the JTS.

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