Jewish Wars, Jewish Warriors:

A Primer of Ancient Jewish Military History

By Benjamin Rigberg

 Professor Benjamin Rigberg died on January 24, 2007, five days short of his 95^th birthday.  He left this uncompleted manuscript on the history of ancient Jewish wars.  Because he was blind, he worked with the help of Stephanie Reich to whom he wanted to give credit as co-author.  As a professor at Monmouth College (now University) his research focused on his academic field of Russian history but, after retirement, he pursued other interests, including publishing an article critiquing the texts used to teach United States history to high school students, a book on the Jewish community of Walla Walla, Washington, and this study of ancient Jewish wars, which he was unable to complete. 

Rigberg was born in 1912 in the Jewish agricultural colony of Woodbine, New Jersey.  His family moved to Philadelphia when he was five, and he grew up and attended school there.  He received his BS degree from Temple University, his MA from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946.  Rigberg taught in the Philadelphia public school system for a number of years and, following World War II, when the barriers against Jews entering the history profession began to fall, he taught at Monmouth College from 1958 to 1977.  Rigberg’s studies in Jewish History and the Hebrew language included a year and a half at Gratz Hebrew College (now Gratz University) from 1929 to 1931, and a year and a half at the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1983 to 1985. 

The manuscript benefitted from the editing skills of Carren Kaston, archeological advice from Sandra Scham, and from the devoted help of his volunteer readers, Don Rothberg, Jeanne Walsh, Sid Booth, Harold Sharlin, Michael Leibman, Tom Blackburn, Katherine Hoyt and others.  It is to all these helpers and to his family that he would surely want to dedicate this work.