become chief of the Office of Strategic Services' Near East Section of the Research and Analysis Branch in Washington, D.C. This position earned him a Certificate of Merit. He was one of many American students and scholars of Orientalism who entered and served in the intelligence services during World War II. Following the war, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania as Chairman of the Department of Oriental Studies from 1947 until his death in 1965. While there, he was appointed A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in 1954. Beginning in 1955, Speiser joined the translation committee of the Jewish Publication Society of America’s Bible translation project that produced an English version of the Torah. Speiser also held positions as President of the American Oriental Society, Vice President of the American Association for Middle East Studies, Vice President of the Linguistic Society of America, and a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He was also given an honorary doctorate in Hebrew Letters by the Hebrew Union College and was appointed to its Archeological School’s Board of Overseers. In 1964, a year prior to his death, Speiser was named a University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, indicating his multidisciplinary work and achievements. On June 15, 1965, Speiser died in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Selected works References 1902 births 1965 deaths Judaic studies American Assyriologists Polish Assyriologists Jewish orientalists Translators of the Bible into English Jewish biblical scholars Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Austro-Hungarian Jews Ukrainian Jews American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Jewish translators of the Bible 20th-century translators 20th-century Jewish biblical scholars 20th-century American archaeologists Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem