Veinberg (Weinberg) Yoel (Joel) Pesakhovich (1 September 1922, Riga) — historian, orientalist, educator.*

Yoel Veinberg was the son of Pesakh and Roza Veynberg (née Blioh). In 1940, he graduated from the Riga Jewish Gymnasium and enrolled in the Faculty of History at the University of Latvia. In 1941, following the occupation of Latvia by German Nazi forces, he was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto and later deported to concentration camps (Stutthof, Buchenwald, among others). In 1945, he was liberated and returned to Riga, where he resumed his studies at the university, graduating in 1946.

From 1946 to 1948 and again from 1951 to 1962, he worked as the chief bibliographer at the State Library of the Latvian SSR. Between 1948 and 1951, he taught history at the University of Latvia, and from 1963 to 1993 at the Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute (DPI). He became an Associate Professor in 1965, Head of the Department of Soviet and General History at DPI from 1976 to 1982, and Professor from 1983 to 1993. He received the degree of Candidate of Sciences in 1954 and the title of Doctor of Historical Sciences for his dissertation “The Civic-Temple Community in the Western Provinces of the Achaemenid Empire”, defended in Tbilisi in 1973 (or 1974). He was named Honorary Doctor in 1996.

From 1991 to 1992, Yoel Veinberg served as Rector of the Open Jewish University in Riga. Between 1991 and 1993, he was a professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia. In 1993, he ha Jerusalem. From 1994 to 2000, he was Professor in the Department of Bible and the Ancient Near East at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Yoel Veinberg was one of the few scholars in the USSR who dedicated his academic career to ancient Jewish history and culture, as well as the history of Israel during the Second Temple period and the Persian era (with several articles on Achaemenid Judea in the 6th–4th centuries BCE), in addition to Biblical studies. He published over 100 books, articles, and other works, including: “Honourable Death is Better than Dishonourable Life” (in Latvian, Riga, 1965); “The Old Testament in the Light of Modern Science” (Riga, 1966); “The Old Testament: Myths, Facts, Dogmas” (in Latvian, Riga, 1969); “Columbuses before Columbus” (in Latvian, Riga, 1973); “Man in the Culture of the Ancient Near East” (Moscow, 1986); “In the Shadow of Pyramids and Ziggurats” (in Latvian, Riga, 1988); “The Civic-Temple Community” (in English, Sheffield, 1992); *“Afterwords and Commentaries” The Song of Songs (in Latvian, Riga, Zinātne, 1993, and later editions in 1997 and 2000); “Der Chronist in seiner Mitwelt” (Berlin–New York, 1996); “Introduction to the Tanakh” in three volumes (Jerusalem–Moscow, 2000); “The Birth of Christianity” (in Latvian, Riga, 1993), among many others published in various languages and countries. A notable contribution is his monograph “The Birth of History: Historical Thought in the Middle East in the Mid-1st Millennium BCE” (Moscow, 1993), in which he uses a wide range of original sources — Sumerian, Hittite, Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Babylonian, and others — to argue for the simultaneity and parallel development of historical thought in Ancient Greece and the Ancient Near East. He is fluent in several languages, including Hebrew, Latin, Ancient Greek, and others. He was awarded the Latvian State Prize for Culture “Spīdola” in 2001 (or 2000?) for the book Pulcetājs (translated from Hebrew, with afterword and commentary by Veynberg). His wife, Lyubov Veynberg (née Filevich) (born 21 February 1926, Rēzekne), was an educator. In 1945, she enrolled in the Latvian-language department of the Faculty of Law at the University of Latvia (then Latvian State University), but in 1949, along with ten other Jewish students, was forced to leave the faculty. She completed her studies at the Faculty of History at the University of Latvia in 1958 and taught history at Riga Secondary Schools Nos. 6 and 24. From 1963 to 1975, she taught history at the 1st Latvian Secondary School in Daugavpils. Their son, Pavel, is a biologist, Candidate of Biological Sciences. He graduated from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Latvia in 1975 and worked as the chief specialist at the North Ossetian State Nature Reserve.* Selected Works: Man in the Culture of the Ancient Near East, Moscow, 1986; The Birth of History: Historical Thought in the Middle East in the Mid-1st Millennium BCE, Moscow, 1993. Literature: Daugavpils Pedagogical University. Research and Science in 80 Years. Biographical Index. 1921–2000. Daugavpils. DPU Publishing “Saule”, 2001, p. 107; Articles for the 80th anniversary of Prof. I. Veynberg by Uldis Bērziņš, I. Sventsitskaya et al. in Humanitāru Zinātņu Vēstnesis, Daugavpils, 2002, No. 2, pp. 117–124; Outstanding Jews of Latvia, informational publication in Latvian, English, and Russian, Riga, 2003.