Louis Ginzberg

Louis Ginzberg (born Nov. 28, 1873, Kovno, Lithuania [now Kaunas, Lithuania]—died Nov. 11, 1953, New York, N.Y., U.S.) was a Lithuanian-born American Judaic scholar.

Ginzberg studied the Talmud at several rabbinical schools, as well as philosophy, history, and Oriental languages at three universities, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1898. He moved to the United States in 1899. From 1902 until his death, Ginzberg was professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

His best-known works are his seven-volume Legends of the Jews (1909–38) and his three-volume Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud (1941; in Hebrew). Into the first he gathered all the folklore in Jewish tradition bearing on Scripture and traced these legends to their sources. The second work, of which only the commentary on the first treatise of the Talmud was completed, discusses the scope and development of rabbinic theology and ritual. It also demonstrates the influence of sociological and economic factors on the evolution of the Halakhah, or Jewish religious law.