[Forwarded by Steve Medema and posted on behalf of Jacob Metzer and Ephraim Kleiman.  HB]
  
  
Haim Barkai  
  
1925-2006  
  
We regret having to inform you that Haim Barkai, Pinhas Sapir Professor Emeritus of
Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, passed away on May 26th, at the age of
80, after a brief illness.
  
Haim graduated from the HU and wrote his Ph.D. thesis under Prof. Lionel (later Lord)
Robbins at the LSE. While the history of economic thought remained his life-long interest,
he also made lasting contributions in other spheres, the economic history of Israel and
Socialist economies in particular. His book on the economics of the Kibbutz is a classic
in its field.
  
At the HU Haim Barkai served successively as Chair of the Economics Department and Dean of
the Faculty of the Social Sciences, as well as chairman of the program committee for the
rebuilding of the university's Mt. Scopus campus. Haim also chaired numerous public
committees, especially on civil service pay, and in the early 1980s he was the chairman of
the Advisory Committee and the Advisory Board of the Bank of Israel.
  
After his retirement from the HU, Haim continued to lead an extremely productive and busy
life. He established and headed the Economics and Business Administration faculty at the
Academic College of Rishon-le-Zion, taught a course in history of economic thought at the
Hebrew University, and had just handed in a monographic essay on the economic history of
the pre-state Zionist enterprise and Israel, which he wrote for the new edition of the
Encyclopedia Judaica. An English translation of the history of Israeli monetary policy,
which he co-authored with Nissan Liviatan, is forthcoming shortly under the imprint of the
Oxford University Press. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
  
Jacob Metzer and Ephraim Kleiman