RUDAVSKY, DAVID

RUDAVSKY, DAVID (1903–1993), U.S. educator and professor of Hebraic studies. Rudavsky was born in Bialystok, Poland, and was taken to New York in 1910. From 1932 to 1942, Rudavsky was principal of the Florence Marshall Hebrew High School in New York. He then worked with the Jewish Education Committee (1942–48), and the Jewish Education Association of Essex County, New Jersey, as executive director (1948–56). A frequent contributor to the journal Jewish Education, he was its managing editor in 1944–46 and associate editor in 1946–48. From 1954 to 1957, he was active with the National Council for Jewish Education as vice president and then as president.

Rudavsky began teaching at New York University in 1945. He became program director of the university's School of Education in 1964, and in 1966 he became acting director of the Institute of Hebraic Studies in the university's graduate division of arts and sciences.

He also served as president of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew (1960–63) and co-edited that organization's publication, Doron: Hebraic Studies (1965), a collection of essays on Hebraic studies in universities. His articles in Jewish and general periodicals reflect Rudavsky's concern for Jewish education in the United States. In 1967 he published Emancipation and Adjustment, in which he discusses the origins and development of contemporary Jewish movements and thought.

Other works by Rudavsky include Israel through the Eyes of Its Leaders (with I. Naamani and A. Katsh, 1971). He also edited Hebraic Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Abraham I. Katsh (with I. Naamani and C. Ehle, 1965) and Israel: Its Politics and Philosophy (with I. Naamani and A. Katsh, 1974).