Safran, Joseph
SAFRAN, JOSEPH
SAFRAN, JOSEPH (1911– ), rabbi and educator. Safran, the son of Rabbi Bezalel Ze'ev Safran, was born in Bacău, Romania. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna where, among his teachers were Samuel *Krauss and A. Aptowitzer, receiving his rabbinical diploma from the Seminary in 1936 and his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1937.
In 1938 he was appointed chief rabbi of Jassy, Romania, where he developed a remarkable educational network which strengthened the Jewish educational system of the community, especially after the mass pogrom of 1941.
In 1944 he immigrated to Ereẓ Israel and served as head of the Marriage Bureau of the Chief Rabbinate of Tel Aviv until 1957, when he emigrated to the United States. In the following year he was appointed to the teaching staff at the Yeshiva University in New York and then professor of Jewish Education at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Yeshiva University.