Pinkhos Churgin (Hebrew: פנחס חורגין; 1894–1957) was an Israeli scholar who was the first President of Bar-Ilan University.
Biography
Churgin was born in Pohost, Belorussia, a shtetl near Pinsk.[1][2] In 1907 he and his parents immigrated to Palestine, and settled in Jerusalem.[1] In 1910 he went to study at the Volozhin Yeshiva.[1] Churgin returned to Palestine in 1912.[1] In 1915 he went to the United States and taught Hebrew.[1] He studied as an undergraduate at Clark College, and then at Yale University, earning a Ph.D. in the field of Semitics, as a student of the famous researcher Charles C. Torrey.
His dissertation, "Targum Jonathan to the Prophets", was published by Yale in 1927 and has since become a classic. It was twice reprinted in the 1980s.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
He was instrumental in the development of Yeshiva University in New York City.[1] In 1920 he began teaching at their Teachers' Institute.[1][8] He was appointed dean of the Institute in 1924.[1][4][9][10] In 1949 Churgin was named president of the Mizrachi Organization of America.[1] He moved to Israel in 1955 to serve as the first President of Bar-Ilan University.[1][4][11][12] He was succeeded as president in 1957 by Joseph H. Lookstein.[13]