Professor Zwi Werblowsky z”l

Professor Werblowsky was born in Frankfurt (Germany) in 1924. His family moved to Palestine towards the end of the 1930's and he studied at several yeshivas. In 1945, he completed his Bachelor’s degree at the University of London. After the war, he was in charge of an orphanage in Holland, which prepared children that had survived the Shoah for immigration to Palestine. He received his doctorate from the University of Geneva in 1951. After teaching for fIve years in England, he immigrated to Israel in 1956 and was among the founders of the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research embraced the cultural, social, intellectual and experiential manifestations of the phenomenon “religion” in all their diversity, among them halakhah, Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy, Christian and Buddhist monasticism, the new religions of Japan, popular cults of China, and processes of modernization and secularization.

In 1958, he was among the founders of the Israel Interfaith Committee and later the Jerusalem Rainbow Club. He was an importance voice in interreligious dialogue in Israel. Many Church leaders knew him and regarded him as a close friend.

May his memory be a source of blessing! We offer condolences to his children and grandchildren and especially our dear friend Ms. Yisca Harani, interfaith activist and teacher.