Gerald Blidstein z”l

TRADITION mourns the passing of Prof. Gerald Blidstein z”l, one of our generation’s most significant and creative practitioners of Jewish thought. Prof. Blidstein served as a member of our editorial board for many years, and contributed many important essays to our pages.

Click here to read some of his scholarship available in the TRADITION Archive.

Rabbi Professor Yaakov (Gerald J.) Blidstein z”l was Professor Emeritus at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He was the the recipient of the Israel Prize in Jewish Thought (2006) and the Jerusalem Prize in Jewish Studies (1988), and  he was a Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences since 2007. Among his numerous research interests, he had written extensively on the legal thought of Maimonides and the relationship between law and ethics in Jewish law as well as on the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. He published widely in his fields of interest and research. He received a B.A. Ph.D., and rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, and an M.A. from Columbia University in English and Comparative Literature.