Quick Facts
Biography
Moshe Zvi (Hirsch) Segal (Hebrew: משה צבי סגל) (born 23 September 1875; died 11 January 1968) was an Israeli rabbi, linguist and Talmudic scholar. Segal appears to have changed his middle name in the late 1950s or early 1960s, eventually dropping Zvi entirely.
Early life
Segal was born in Maishad, Lithuania in 1875. In 1896, he moved with his family to Scotland and subsequently to London. He was ordained as a rabbi in 1902 and later obtained a degree from Oxford University.He was the Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1910 to 1918, when he went to the British Mandate of Palestine as a member of the Zionist Commission with Chaim Weizmann.In 1926 he was appointed lecturer at the Hebrew University, where he was promoted to a chair in Bible and Semitic languages in 1939.
Awards
- In 1936 (jointly with Raphael Patai) and again in 1950, Segal was awarded the Bialik Prize for Jewish Thought.
- In 1954, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for Jewish studies.