On Friday, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz died in Jerusalem at the age of eighty-three. A theologian, mystic, educator, and scholar, Steinsaltz began his life’s work at the age of twenty-seven: producing an edition of the Babylonian Talmud with modern Hebrew translation and commentary that would make this abstruse text accessible to the beginning student. He then expanded his horizons to work on an English version (reviewed here), as well as a similar Hebrew-language edition of the older, less studied, and even more abstruse Jerusalem Talmud. In a 1990 essay in Commentary, Edward Alexander took stock of both the man and his mission:

At the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister drew attention to Hizballah’s use of human shields, pointing out three locations where the Iran-backed terrorist group has constructed factories for the production of precision-guided missiles: two beneath multistory apartment buildings and one in an urban residential neighborhood in close proximity to gas installations. Such behavior not only exhibits reckless disregard for human life, but also violates international law. It is also a useful tactic, as Orde Kittrie explains: