Words of Tribute to Prof. Gabi Barkay z”l – Lecturer at Schechter 1993-2006

Delivered at Yad Ben-Zvi, February 10, 2026

I had the privilege of knowing Prof. Gabi Barkay, of blessed memory, in two different contexts:

I first met Gabi when he joined Congregation Moreshet Avraham in Jerusalem over forty years ago. He would deliver Divrei Torah, as well as discussions on the weekly Torah portion which took place once a month. Every Dvar Torah or discussion was impeccably constructed—a brilliant combination of Bible and archaeology.

I also knew him well via the Schechter Institute. I still have notes from a lecture he gave at Schechter in July 1986 about his discovery of the Birkat Cohanim (The Priestly Blessing) amulets from the seventh century BCE at Ketef Hinnom in 1979. Moreover, as Dean and later President of the Schechter Institute, I employed him in the Land of Israel Studies M.A. track for thirteen years—from 1993 until 2006. Finally, in the early 2000s, he and I lectured together in Chicago at a day of learning sponsored by the Schechter Institutes.

I would like to share five insights about Gabi Barkay z”l:

1. As many of you know, Gabi was born in the Budapest Ghetto in June 1944 and was there until the liberation of the ghetto in January 1945. He shared his crib with an old Torah scroll that had belonged to his grandfather. About twenty years ago, Gabi funded the correction of that Torah scroll and donated it to Congregation Moreshet Avraham in Jerusalem. He asked me to read from it at that moving ceremony.

On the other hand, you may not know that in antiquity there was a widespread belief that whatever happened to a woman at the moment of conception or during pregnancy had an effect on the fetus. Dr. Julius Preuss referred to this belief as “Psychic Maternal Influences on the Fetus” in his classic work Biblical and Talmudic Medicine (New York, 1978, pp. 391-392).

In the footsteps of this ancient belief, I would like to suggest that perhaps Gabi knew the Bible by heart because he shared his crib with a Torah scroll for many months!

2. We have learned in Pirkei Avot 2:8:

Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai had five disciples… Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus – a plastered cistern that does not lose a drop… and Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh – a surging spring.

In other words, Rabbi Eliezer represents the student who remembers everything by heart. but is unable to innovate anything he did not hear from his teacher. Indeed, this is exactly what he said about himself in Sukkah 28a:

Our Rabbis taught: A story is told of Rabbi Eliezer who spent Shabbat in the Upper Galilee, and they asked him thirty questions regarding the laws of the sukkah. To twelve of them he said: ‘I have heard’; to eighteen he said: ‘I have not heard’… And he concluded: ‘I have never said anything that I did not hear from my teacher.’

On the other hand, Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh represents the brilliant student who comes up with new interpretations, but does not necessarily remember everything by heart.

Similarly, we have learned at the end of Tractate Berakhot (fol. 64a) about Rabbah and Rav Yosef: Rav Yosef was called Sinai — one who knew everything by heart — whereas Rabbah was described as one who “uproots mountains” with his new interpretations.

Gabi Barkay was a rare combination of both Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh — a “plastered cistern that does not lose a drop,” and at the same time a “surging spring”; and likewise of Rabbah and Rav Yosef — both Sinai and one who uproots mountains.

On the one hand, Gabi remembered everything by heart — Tanakh, archaeology of all periods and all lands, as well as the history of archaeology. On the other hand, he knew how to use that vast knowledge to generate profound and original insights.

The proof for this may be found in two of his last publications:

• Be’ahat Me’einayikh: The Song of Songs Through an Archaeological-Historical Lens, 2025 (Hebrew)
• And his article “The Stranger, the Orphan and the Widow” (Hebrew) which will soon appear in the Eretz Israel yearbook

Both works combine extraordinary text proficiency with major new interpretations.

3. It is said of Moses our Teacher at the end of his life (Deuteronomy 34:7): “His eye had not dimmed, nor had his vigor diminished.” Although Gabi was quite ill in recent years, he did not lose his phenomenal memory nor his ability to generate new insights. In June 2024, a book-launch for the Gabriel Jubilee Volume was held at the Begin Center. Gabi lectured there on his article “The Stranger, the Orphan and the Widow” as always, without notes, every word in its proper place.
4. Max Brod once wrote: “Whoever wishes to accomplish a great task, must be free of the fear of men—utterly free.” (Joseph Baron, Treasury of Jewish Quotations, New York, 1956, p. 120)

Gabi Barkay was not afraid of anyone. There are many Bible scholars and archaeologists today who attempt to prove that most of what is written in the Bible is fiction, or who attempt to date nearly every biblical event to the Second Temple period. Gabi knew that this was not true—and he proved that it was not true. As he writes in the introduction to his new book on the Song of Songs (p. 11, my translation):

At the present stage of research of the history of Israel and of Biblical studies, it is not fashionable to argue for the existence of a large kingdom in the days of Solomon, or to accept the existence of the United Monarchy as a historical entity. The view presented here is a minority opinion, opposed to the ‘bon ton’, but it is well-supported by a close analysis of the details of the text and by comparison with the archaeological picture.

5. Finally, a story that Zachi Dvira relates in the introduction to the Gabriel Jubilee Volume: When Zachi discovered in 1999 the destruction being carried out on the Temple Mount by the Waqf, he brought Gabi, on a Friday afternoon, artifacts from the truckloads of construction rubble that the Waqf had dumped into the Kidron Valley. Not only did Gabi not rebuke him for conducting an “unauthorized excavation,” he praised him and quoted Pirkei Avot 2:5: “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”

This is why, when Gabi and Zachi approached me at the end of 2004 and asked for financial assistance to launch the Temple Mount Sifting Project, I turned to Mr. Harvey L. Miller, a major Schechter supporter in Chicago, who immediately understood the historic importance of this project and donated $10,000. Gabi did not merely “strive to be a man”—he was “a man.”

He and Zachi their team of 270,000 volunteers have thus far rescued approximately 500,000 archaeological artifacts from the Temple Mount.

Therefore, about Prof. Gabi Barkay z”l one can say in the words of Shakespeare (Hamlet I, 2): “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” May his memory be for a blessing!

(image: Prof. Gabi Barkay z”l sitting at Ketef Hinnom, via Wikicommons CCA-SA 3.0 by Ori229)