The hospital Shaare Zedek in Jerusalem announced the death Friday, August 7, rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, author of a translation of the reference of the Talmud. His death was due to illness. He was 83 years old. Born in Jerusalem in 1937 in a family layman, he first studied mathematics and chemistry before turning to the study of the sacred texts, the jews.

In 1965, he embarked on the translation colossal of the babylonian Talmud in modern Hebrew, allowing tens of thousands of people to have access to the text in aramaic outside of the yechivot (talmudic schools). The Talmud, which comes from the word " learn ", is the recording in writing the law and the jewish tradition spoken by the rabbis. The edition, in 45 volumes of rabbi Steinsaltz (translated into several languages and presents the logic, the method, the structure and content of the Talmud) became a reference book.

A "great scientist"

a prolific Author, he has also written dozens of books of exegesis on the biblical literature and rabbinic, translated in English, French, Russian, chinese, and Korean. He had received in 1988 the prestigious Israel. He was a member of the movement, hasidic Chabad, which is headquartered in New York and had been tipped to succeed in 1994, its leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

He had lost the use of the word in 2016 after a STROKE. In a statement, israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Friday the memory of a " great scientist, genius of the Torah and a man of exceptional spirit ". "He was a man of great spiritual courage, of deep knowledge and deep thinking, which has enabled the people of Israel access to the Talmud in Hebrew, clear and accessible," said israeli president Reuven Rivlin.