Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (17^th February 1914 – 16^th May 1977).

 Ben-Sasson was an Israeli historian, professor of History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He specialized in the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages as well as matters pertaining to the history of the Jews in the Land of Israel in modern times.

Ben-Sasson was born in Volozhin, Lithuania, to Freidel (whose Hebrew name he and his brother used as their surname in Israel) and to Rabbi Shmuel Avigdor HaLevi Drazhinski, a rabbi at the Volozhin Yeshiva. His maternal grandfather was Rabbi Haim Hillel Ozer Grodzinski. Even as a teenager, he was noted for his public activities, including the Hechalutz HaMizrahi organization. He emigrated to Israel in 1934 and taught at the Mizrahi Teachers Seminary as well as in various educational frameworks for children and youth in Jerusalem. He also volunteered with the Bnei Akiva Youth Movement and the Yavne Student Union.

Upon his arrival in Israel, Ben-Sasson enlisted in the Haganah; during the Arab Revolt in 1936, he served in the Haganah’s ‘religious company’ in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, after which he served in their Information Bureau in Jerusalem. According to one of his students, Reuven Bonfil: he remained attached to the Israel Defense Forces for the rest of his life and took a positive part in the highest-level study meetings. He participated in the study of and dialogue on important current affairs. His involvement of modern Jewish military service was also reflected by his participation in the writing and editing of The History of the Haganah, under the editorship of Prof. Ben-Zion Dinur. However, his main field of expertise was the Middle Ages. However, he also dedicated his time to the research and historical description of the Jewish battalions during WW1.

He passed away in Jerusalem on 16^th May 1977.

After he had competed his studies at the Seminary, he went on to study at the Hebrew University. Ben-Sasson studied under the historian Yitzhak Baer and specialized in the history of the people Israel during the Middle Ages as well as at the start of the contemporary world. He graduated in the humanities in 1944.

In 1949, Ben-Simon started teaching at the university and was appointed as full professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1970. As a teacher he was greatly admired and some of his pupils continued studying for more advanced degrees.

Besides his many and varied researches, Ben-Sasson was one of the editors of the journal Zion, and also edited the historical section of the Encyclopedia Judaica.

Ben-Sasson perceived historical research, historiography and interest in history in general, as a kind of mental activity necessary for the strength of one’s personality and the correction of human society. He said, for example:

“If the truth be known, modern man should, first and foremost, devote his heart to the world of history, for the sake of his soul and the health of his society”.

In this characteristic statement, there was a fundamental demand upon his contemporaries and readers, wherever they may be, not only to delve deeper into historical research, but also to acquire the understanding that the historical essay is a type of a book of man. At a time of increasing technologization in our daily lives, where the individual, the individuum, without the burden of generations and their cultures, and the thinkers are being replaced by mass media, Ben-Sasson’s call was a type of rebellion of an educator with what is left of a great spirit. According to him, historical research and historical essays are imbued with the idea that rebellion is always possible; the pursuit of history redeems man from the functionality of merely contemporary existence; historiography identifies and throws light on transitional periods and moments, thereby showing the possibility that everything can be changed.

Ben-Sasson also emphasized the seriousness and importance of history because of his perception of human and national history as a multi-faceted, but also contradictory, phenomenon; but, in fact, it is intertwined with super-trends exposed by the historian. This is how Ben-Sasson viewed the phenomenon of  Kiddush HaShem (sanctification of God’s name) and the decision made by Jews to die, or even commit suicide, so as not to convert to paganism or Christianity, which had been common amongst the Jews in the Land of Israel and Europe since antiquity, an act of human strength and bravery which, in an era of a national liberation movement, would be expressed as an accumulation of active armed forces, the establishment of an army and organized warfare. In other words, Ben-Sasson not only saw a close fundamental connection but a spiritual common denominator, between the seemingly passive Jews murdered during the crusades, and active Jewish military personnel, ‘activists’, the soldiers of his generation in the Hebrew Battalions, whom he had researched.

One of his students, Prof. Joseph Hacker, wrote about the route he had taken: “In his research and books, Ben-Sasson is consistent in his investigations and the quest for inner essence of the foundation of analysis and clarification of diverse primary sources. The sources were initially found in literary essays, philosophical reference books, and halachic essays; sermons, interpretations and questions and answers; historical essays and polemic writings; poetry and prose, religious rulings and missives; books on ethics and new interpretations of the Torah. Certificates and external sources served as a foundation of factual description, but whatever was lacking was completed with spiritual and cultural painting. However, most of Ben-Sasson’s efforts are subject to clarifying the inner creation and testimony of Jewish society and its image ….. and the questions that guide him testify to his striving to understand that which distinguishes the People of Israel (in all its different shades and hues) from all other nations”.

His family:

His younger brother, Prof. Yona Ben-Sasson, was a lecturer of Jewish philosophy and the director of the Department of Torah Culture at the Ministry of Education. His son, Menachem Ben-Sasson, is a professor of Jewish history, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, formerly its rector, and previously a Member of the Knesset and chairman of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

Source: Wikipedia