Yoram Tsafrir

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Yoram Tsafrir.

Yoram Tsafrir , יורם צפריר originally יורם אבי־תמר Yoram Avi-Tamar (born January 30, 1938 in Kfar Azar; † November 23, 2015 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli archaeologist with a focus on the Christian-Byzantine era. He was committed to the preservation of archaeological sites and their opening up to the public. At the same time he turned against what he saw as the intrusion of political interests into archaeological projects.

Life

Yoram Tsafrir was born in the Moschaw Kfar Azar as the youngest child of Nehamia Feigin and Zippora, née. Eisenstein. His parents immigrated from Belarus in the 1920s . As a volunteer in surveys and excavations, Tsafrir developed his interest in archeology.

He graduated from the Hebrew University with a bachelor's degree in archeology and the history of ancient Judaism in 1961 and married Sarai Muchnik (later a librarian at the National and University Library in Jerusalem) the following year.

After his military service, Yoram Tsafrir was one of the founders of the left-wing kibbutz Or HaNer in the northern Negev (1955 to 1957). During the Six Day War he was called up as a reservist and suffered severe leg injuries. After several operations, he was unable to walk for life. (He processed his experiences in the book פציעה Injury , for which he received the 1976 Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for Military Literature .)

After his rehabilitation he continued his studies in archeology (Lecturer 1969, Senior Lecturer 1976). In 1976 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Zion, the southwest hill of Jerusalem, and its role in the urban development of the Byzantine city.

Khirbet Bureikut near Kfar Etzion was the first of numerous Byzantine churches that Tsafrir explored archaeologically. Among other things, he led the excavations of the Hasmonean fortress in Alexandreion and in Scythopolis , an urban center of the Roman, Byzantine and early Muslim times.

After his mentor Michael Avi-Yonah passed away in 1974, Tsafrir continued many of his projects, most notably the Gazetteer of Roman Palestine . From 1981 he was assistant professor, 1987 professor, 1989 to 1992 director of the Institute of Archeology; from 2001 to 2007 he was director of the national library. He was also a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities .

Teaching

Yoram Tsafrir established the Byzantine Christian archeology of the Holy Land as an independent discipline that spans the period from Constantine the Great (313) to the Arab conquest (636-640). He was awarded the EMET Prize in 2014 for his life's work, in particular for the method he developed to combine source study and archeology .

As a researcher, he was a specialist in the multiethnic and multicultural history of Jerusalem and turned against current projects aimed at increasing the Jewish presence in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem; The Ir David (City of David) Foundation used archaeological excavations as starting points for the development of such Jewish neighborhoods. In the 1990s, Yoram Tsafrir headed an initiative against plans by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation to build the Beit Haliba office complex on the site of an important archaeological site on Western Wall Plaza .

Tsafrir protested at the speed with which the excavations in the City of David were proceeding and which, in his opinion, had a political agenda behind it.

Publications (in selection)

  • Excavations at Rehovot-in-the-Negev (= Qedem. Volume 25). Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1988.
  • Ancient Churches Revealed. Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 1993.
  • with Leah Di Segni, Judith Green: Tabula Imperii Romani : Iudaea Palaestina: Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods. Maps and Gazetteer . Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem 1994, ISBN 9-65-208107-8 .
  • with Leah Di Segni, Judith Green: The Onomasticon of Iudaea-Palaestina and Arabia in the Greek and Latin Sources. Volume 1: Introduction, Sources and Major Texts. Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem 2015.
  • with Martin Biddle, Michel Zabé, Garo Nalbandian: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Belser, Stuttgart 2000.
  • Funding Archaeological Research: National-cultural Values ​​and Objective Knowledge - the Israeli Experience. In: Matthias Dörries, Lorraine Daston, Michael Hagner (eds.): Science between money and mind. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin 2001, pp. 123–131.

literature

  • Leah Di Segni, Y. Hirschfeld, J. Patrich, R. Talgam (Eds.): Man near a Roman arch. Studies presented to Prof. Yoram Tsafrir . Jerusalem 2009 (pp. 1–8 list of publications).
  • Yoram Tsafrir obituary. In: Journal of Roman Archeology 29, 2016, pp. 1048-1051 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yoram Tsafrir Hebrew University of Jerusalem | HUJI Institute of Archeology. Retrieved March 11, 2018 .
  2. ^ Emet Prize Laureates. Retrieved March 11, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Tsafrir, Yoram
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Avi-Tamar, Yoram (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Kfar Azar
DATE OF DEATH 23rd November 2015
Place of death Jerusalem