Yosef Burg - Biography

Biography

Shlomo Yosef Burg was born in Dresden, Germany. He attended the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin from 1928 to 1938, and was ordained as a rabbi that year. He also studied at the University of Berlin from 1928 to 1931, and received a Doctorate in mathematics and logic from the University of Leipzig in 1933.

While studying at the University of Leipzig, he joined the Young Mizrahi religious Zionist movement. He arranged Jewish prayer services in private homes after German synagogues were burned, and worked underground to help Jews escape to Britain and the Netherlands. His mother and grandmother died in Nazi concentration camps.

In 1939, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine. He worked as teacher at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv before moving to Jerusalem. There he become a research fellow at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Burg lived in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Burg was married to Rivka Slonim, who was born in Hebron and survived the 1929 Hebron massacre. They had a son, Avraham, a politician who served as speaker of the fifteenth Knesset, and a daughter, Ada, a doctor.

Burg died on 15 October 1999 at the age of 90 at the Sha'arei Tzedek Medical Center.