Eliezer Shulman

Eliezer Shulman (Hebrew אליעזר שולמן; July 11, 1923, Tarutino, Bessarabia, Romania – January 3, 2006 [3 Tevet 5766], Bat Yam, Israel) was a biblical scholar and historian. He wrote in Hebrew.

Shulman was born in the German-Jewish town Tarutino, Romania (now Tarutino district of Odessa province, Ukraine) in 1923, son of a merchant of agricultural and building supplies. He studied at a Jewish school, joined Zionist youth movement Betar, and planned to immigrate to Palestine with the underground movement Aliyah Af Al Pi. However, in the summer of 1940, as the result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, USSR occupied and annexed Bessarabia from Romania. On June 13, 1941, the Shulman family was deported to Kazakhstan. There Eliezer worked as a laborer, a blacksmith, and, finally, a tractor driver. In 1946, he graduated from a college for railway technicians in Aktyubinsk (now Aktobe), Kazakhstan, and was transferred to Stalinsk (now Novokuznetsk), Siberia to work on railroads construction. He worked as a construction supervisor, technician, engineer, and eventually became the chief engineer of the transportation division within a mining industry design institute.

In 1948 he married a Soviet medical doctor, Sarah Finestein. They had two daughters, whom Eliezer gave biblical names, taught Hebrew, TaNaKh (Hebrew Bible) and Jewish history. Throughout his 33 years in Kazakhstan and Siberia, he did not give up his dream of living in Israel. Eliezer and his daughters translated Israeli songs into Russian, and since mid-1960s secretly engaged in teaching Hebrew, Jewish history, TaNaKh and celebrating Jewish holidays. Eliezer began making chronological graphs of biblical events to aid in his teaching TaNaKh.

In 1975, the family was finally able to reach Israel. There Eliezer worked for the Israel Railways. After his retirement in 1988, he worked as a consultant to the Director General of the Israel Railways until 1993. Meanwhile he continued to work on biblical research and analysis, frequently visiting Tel-Aviv library.

In 1981, Shulman’s first book - Seder ha-korot ba-Chumash (The Sequence of Events in the Pentateuch) – was published by the Israeli Ministry of Defense Publishing House. His second book - Seder Ha'korot be'TaNaKh (The Sequence of Events in the Old Testament) was published in 1984. This book was translated into English, Spanish and Russian. Eliezer Shulman continued research, concentrating on certain biblical narratives, working through the individual books of Talmud, Rashi commentaries, works of Josephus Flavius, publishing 12 books. His last book - "Semites, Jews, Israelites, Jews" - was published posthumously.