Jacob Milgrom

Jacob Milgrom, Hebrew יעקב מילגרום, ( born 1 February 1923 in Brooklyn, New York City; † June 5, 2010 in Jerusalem ) was an American- Israeli rabbi and scholar of religion.

Biography

After school he studied at Brooklyn College and at the rabbinical seminary of the Jewish Theological Seminary. After his ordination as a rabbi, he served since 1965 as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There he was, until his retirement in 1994, Head of the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

As a scholar of religion, he dealt with the commandments of ritual purity in Judaism as the Tahara. From his Bible studies, he concluded that the ban on homosexuality would apply only to Jewish men.

Particular, however, he was regarded as the world's leading researcher and as an authority for the 3rd book of Genesis, the Leviticus. As a representative of Conservative Judaism in the rabbinic literature, he was next of Nahum Sarna, Baruch Levine and Jeffrey Tigay author of the five volume JPS Commentary on the Torah.

After his retirement he moved to Israel in 1994, where he died from the effects of intracerebral hemorrhage in Jerusalem.

Publications

  • Cult and conscience: the Asham and the priestly doctrine of repentance, 1976, ISBN 90-04-04476-0
  • Leviticus 1-16, 1991
  • Leviticus 17-22, 2000
  • Leviticus 23-27, 2001
  • Jacob Milgrom, David Pearson Wright, David Noel Freedman, Avi Hurvitz: Pomegranates and golden bells: studies in biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, 1995, ISBN 0-931464-87-0
Jewish Theological Seminary of America Book of Leviticus Integrated Authority File
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