Chaim Menachem Rabin (; 1915–1996) was a German, then British, and finally

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i professor of

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

and

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

. Chaim Rabin was born in

Giessen Giessen, spelled in German (), is a town in the Germany, German States of Germany, state () of Hesse, capital of both the Giessen (district), district of Giessen and the Giessen (region), administrative region of Giessen. The population is appro ...

, Germany, 22 November 1915, the son of Israel and Martel Rabin. Having completed his school studies in April 1933 he spent the year 1933–1934 in

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

, studying at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

.Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1995-1996
/ref>Utz Maas: ''Verfolgung und Auswanderung deutschsprachiger Sprachforscher 1933-1945.'
entry for Chaim Rabin
/ref> He then emigrated to England, where he eventually became a British citizen. He enrolled as a student at the School of Oriental Studies of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

where he received his BA degree in 1937. In 1939 he was awarded his PhD with a thesis entitled ''Studies in Early Arabic Dialects'' at the now renamed School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where from 1938 was employed as a lecturer. On the outbreak of the war he was briefly interned on the

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

, but was soon released. In 1941 he moved to the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, where he received his MA, then D.Phil. in 1942, with a thesis entitled ''The Development of the Syntax of Post-Biblical Hebrew''. In 1943 he was appointed Cowley Lecturer in Post-Biblical

there. In 1956 with his wife, Batya, he emigrated to Israel, and took a post of Associate Professor, then full Professor of Hebrew Language at the

, where he remained until his retirement in 1985. At the Second International Conference Seminar of

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

Studies, held at Madras (now,

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

), India, Prof. Rabin presented a study on "Loanword evidence in biblical Hebrew for trade between

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

and

in the first millennium BC" and projected his hopes "that some day a Tamil scholar may try and discover whether there are in Tamil any loanwords from Hebrew or from South-Arabian". Following his early interest in

Arabic dialects Varieties of Arabic (or dialects or vernaculars) are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. Arabic is a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family that originated in the Arabian P ...

, Chaim Rabin's field were all aspects of Hebraic linguistics, in particular, translations of the language of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

, the Dead Sea Manuscripts, and the detailed study of medieval codices. He succeeded Moshe Goshen-Gottstein as

chief editor An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's Editing, editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is hel ...

of the Hebrew University Bible Project. Rabin was a pioneer in training Israeli

translators Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

. Together with Shoshana Bloom, he established the Hebrew University's Department of Scientific Translation. He was a member of the

Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language (, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of Givat Ram cam ...

and died in Jerusalem on 13 May 1996.

Published works

* Hayim M. Nahmad with C. Rabin: ''Everyday Arabic: conversations in Syrian and Palestinian colloquial Arabic with vocabulary, phonetic and grammatical introduction, lists of useful culinary, military, political and commercial terms.'' with a Foreword by H. A. R. Gibb. London: Dent, 1940 *''Arabic Reader''. London: Lund Humphries 1947 *''Everyday Hebrew - Twenty-nine Simple Conversations with English Translation and Full Grammatical Introduction'' London: Dent 1948 *''Hebrew Reader''. London: Lund Humphries 1949 *''Ancient West-Arabian: a study of the dialects of the Western Highlands of Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D''. London: Taylor's Foreign Press 1951 *

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...

, '' The guide of the perplexed'', with introduction and commentary by

Julius Guttmann Julius Guttmann (born Yitzchak Guttmann, ; 15 April 1880 in Hildesheim – 19 May 1950 in Jerusalem), was a Germany, German-born rabbi, Jewish theologian, and philosopher of religion. Biography Julius was born to Jakob Guttmann (rabbi), Jakob Gu ...

. translated from the Arabic by Chaim Rabin. London: East and West Library 1952 *''The Zadokite Documents. I. The Admonition, II. The Laws. Edited with a translation and notes by Chaim Rabin''. Oxford:

Clarendon Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

1954 *''The Beginnings of Classical Arabic''. in Studia Islamica 4 (1955) pp. 19–37. reprinted in Ibn Warraq, '' What the Koran Really Says'' (2002) * "

Alexander Jannaeus Alexander Jannaeus ( , English: "Alexander Jannaios", usually Latinised to "Alexander Jannaeus"; ''Yannaʾy''; born Jonathan ) was the second king of the Hasmonean dynasty, who ruled over an expanding kingdom of Judaea from 103 to 76 BCE. ...

and the Pharisees". in: ''Journal of Jewish Studies'' 7 (1956), pp. 3–11 * ''Qumran Studies''. Oxford University Press 1957. republished Schocken 1975 * "The Linguistics of Translation". in: A. D. Booth (ed.), ''Aspects of Translation'' (Studies in Communications 2), London: Secker and Warburg 1958, pp. 123ff * (with Yigael Yadin), ''Aspects of the Dead Sea scrolls''. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University 1958 * ''Studies in the Bible : edited on behalf of the Institute of Jewish Studies in the Faculty of Humanities''. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University 1961 * "Etymological Miscellanea", in: ''Scripta Hierosolymitana'' 8 (1961), pp. 384–400. * ''Essays on the Dead Sea scrolls. In memory of E. L. Sukenik.'' Jerusalem : Hekhal Ha-Sefer, 1961 * Yigael Yadin (edited with commentary), ''The scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness'', translated by Batya and Chaim Rabin. London: Oxford University Press 1962 * ''Die Renaissance der hebräischen Sprache.'' Zürich : Israel-Informations-Büro, 1963 * ''The influence of different systems of Hebrew orthography on reading efficiency''. Jerusalem: The Israel Institute of Applied Social Research 1968 *''Loanword Evidence in Biblical Hebrew for Trade between Tamil Nad and Palestine in the First Millenium B.C.''. in Asher R. E. (ed), ''Proceedings of the Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies'' (1971), vol.1, pp. 432–440. * Thesaurus of the Hebrew language in dictionary form. Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1970–1973 ** Thesaurus of the Hebrew ... ; Volume I. 1970 ** Thesaurus of the Hebrew ... ; Volume II. 1973 *
A Short History of the Hebrew Language
'. Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency (1973) * Chaim Rabin (Editor): ''Bible Translation: An Introduction.'' Israel: Bialik, 1984 (previously published in: Encyclopaedia biblica, 8 (1982), 737–870) * ''Die Entwicklung der hebräischen Sprache.'' Wiesbaden : Reichert in Komm., 1988 (publications of the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, Nr. 2) * Chaim Rabin, Zvi Raday: ''Otsar ha-milim. Milim, tserufim e-imrot.'' (Thesaurus of the Hebrew Language in Dictionary Form. Edited by Chaim Rabin and Zvi Raday. 3 vols. Jerusalem, Sivan Press (1988) ontents: vol 1. A-L; vol 2. M-P; vol 3. TZ-T.* Chaim Rabin, Tzvi Raday: ''Hamilon HeHadash LaTanach'' (The New Bible Dictionary). (in Hebrew), 3 vols. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1989 * ''Semitic Languages - An Introduction.'' The Bialik Institute (Mosad Bialik) 1991 * ''Linguistic Studies : Collected Papers in Hebrew and Semitic Languages.'' Jerusalem, Israel: Bialik Institute, 1999 * ''The development of the syntax of post-biblical Hebrew''. Leiden; Boston: Brill 2000. .Bibliographie Linguistique - Linguistic Bibliography
/ref>

References

*Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, Shlomo Morag, Simcha Kogut (eds.), ''Studies on Hebrew and other Semitic languages presented to Chaim Rabin''. Jerusalem: Akademon Press 1990

External links

University CV
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chaim Rabin: A Friend and Mentor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabin, Chaim Menachem People from Giessen Linguists from Israel Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Alumni of SOAS University of London Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Israeli people of German-Jewish descent 1915 births 1996 deaths 20th-century linguists British emigrants to Israel Burials at Har HaMenuchot