Julien Klener

Who is Julien Klener?

Julien Klener is a Belgian linguist born in Ostend, Belgium in 1939.

During World War II he was a hidden child in Brussels. Since 1945, being back in Ostend, he went to primary and secondary school and later on studied Germanic languages and Semitic languages. His main languages being Biblical Hebrew, Accadian, Biblical Aramaic,Talmudic Aramaic, Ugaritic, Arabic and also a non-Semitic language, Indonesian. After a few years teaching on higher secondary level he continued his career at the Dutch-speaking Ghent University where he lectured until 2004. His main teachings concerned: Judaism as a cultural system, Biblical Hebrew Comparative linguistics of the Afro-Asiatic languages, Semitic Epigraphy] and General Introduction to Semitic Studies. He also studied in Amsterdam, Jerusalem and in 1977 received a Fulbright-grant which brought him to California. During his tenure at Ghent University, he also taught, for about ten years, at the French-speaking University of Liège. He published approx. 120 monographies and articles on different aspects of his subjects, cfr. f.i. Spanish Jewry at the Eve of the Expulsion,pp.