Raphael Patai

Hungarian Jewish ethnographer, historian, and anthropologist
Raphael Patai (Hebrew רפאל פטאי; November 22, 1910 − July 20, 1996), born Ervin György Patai, was a Hungarian Jewish ethnographer, historian, Orientalist and anthropologist.

Patai was born in Budapest, Austria Hungary in 1910 to Edith Patai, née Ehrenfeld, and vertical align=sup. Patai's mother was born in Nagyvárad to German speaking, Jewish parents who expressed their commitment to Magyar nationalism by sending their daughter to Hungarian language schools. Both parents spoke Hungarian and German fluently and educated their children to be perfectly fluent in both languages. In 1947 Patai went to New York with a fellowship from the Viking Fund for Anthropological Research (later renamed the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research); he also studied the Jews of Mexico. Patai settled in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1952. He held visiting professorships at a number of the country's most prestigious colleges, including Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Princeton, and Ohio State. He held full professorships of anthropology at Dropsie College from 1948 to 1957 and Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 1952 he was asked by the United Nations to direct a research project on Syria, Lebanon and Jordan for the Human Relations Area Files. Patai's work was wide ranging but focused primarily on the cultural development of the ancient Hebrews and Israelites, on Jewish history and culture, and on the anthropology of the Middle East generally. He was the author of hundreds of scholarly articles and several dozen books, including three autobiographical volumes. In 1985 he was a contributor to an exhibit at the Museum of New Mexico.

Patai married Naomi Tolkowsky, whose family had moved to what was then Palestine in the early twentieth century; they had two daughters, Jennifer (born 1942) and Daphne (born 1943). He died in 1996 in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 85. Longtime Hebrew University of Jerusalem organic chemistry professor Saul Patai (1918 1998) was his brother.