Isaac Barzilay

Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay (1915–2006) was a scholar and professor of Jewish history. Born in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania, the son of a rabbi, and later in Yashenofki, Poland, he attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1933, before moving to the United States in 1947, where he worked under Salo Baron, who was a great influence on his work, at Columbia University and received a PhD in 1955. He taught at Wayne State University before returning to Columbia in 1959 where he taught until retirement. He served as president of the American Academy for Jewish Research and received an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York where he also taught. He specialized in the study of the Haskalah. David B. Ruderman considers Barzilay's study of Joseph Delmedigo to be the most important since Abraham Geiger. Barzilay connects the German enlightenment to the Italian, is skeptical of the kabbalah, and interested in Jewish rationalism within the context of Delmedigo's work in Jewish philosophy.

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