David Weiss Halivni, a theologian and pioneer in the field of academic Talmudic scholarship, died June 29 in Israel, and was buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives.

Born in today’s Ukraine, Halivni was raised in Sighet, Romania, by a Talmudic scholar grandfather, who fostered his evident genius with rabbinic texts. In Sighet, he studied alongside Elie Wiesel, who remained a close, lifelong friend.

Halivni was ordained as a rabbi at 15, but by age 16, he was captured by the Nazis and, like Wiesel, was sent to Auschwitz and a series of Nazi camps. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

In the United States, he taught at JTS and Columbia and was also the longtime head of Kehilat Orach Eliezer (KOE) in Manhattan. He retired in 2005, moved to Israel, and taught at Hebrew University and Bar Ilan University well into his 90s. In 2008, Halivni was awarded the Israel Prize.