Yitzhak Raveh (10 November 1906 – 8 November 1989) was a German-born Israeli judge who was one of the panel of three judges presiding over the trial of Adolf Eichmann.The other two judges were Moshe Landau and Benjamin Halevi.
Yitzhak Raveh was born in Aurich, Lower Saxony, Germany. His given name at birth was Franz Reuss. He was the youngest of six children born to Heinrich and Selma Reuss. His father was a teacher, Hebrew scholar and author. In 1908, Heinrich Reuss and his family moved from Aurich to Berlin.
Yitzhak Raveh grew up in an environment of both German and Jewish cultures. After his primary and secondary education at local German schools, he studied law at the University of Berlin from 1924 to 1927, completing his law degree in 1927, and obtained his Doctorate of Law in 1929. After two years in a private law practice, Raveh was appointed as a Court Assessor, Assistant Judge, and Judge at the Court of First Instance at Charlottenburg, positions he held from 1931 until the spring of 1933. When the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, he sensed an increasing animosity and competitiveness directed at him by his colleagues at the court, leading him to tend his resignation from his post on March 31, 1933. A day later, all Jewish Judges who had been admitted to the Bar after 1 August 1914 were permanently removed from the bench. Within a month, Judge Raveh, with his young wife Batya, boarded a ship for Israel, then the British mandate of Palestine.
In Israel, Judge Raveh quickly resumed his legal profession and rose from a private law practice, through directorship of the Israeli Land Registration Ministry, to his appointment in 1952 as Judge in the Tel Aviv-Yafo District Court, a position he held until his retirement in 1976, and in which he specialized in Land Law. Upon accepting the judgeship, he officially changed his given name at birth, Franz Reuss, to Yitzhak Raveh (initially spelled Ravé).
In 1960, Judge Yitzhak Raveh agreed to serve on the special, three-judge panel at the Jerusalem District Court created for the trial of Adolf Eichmann who had been instrumental in the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of European Jews during the Second World War. Judge Raveh was asked to serve on that sensitive trial because of his judicial acumen, his thorough familiarity with the German language, literature, philosophy, educational system and culture, and because none of his immediate family had been exterminated during the war, as his parents were already dead and his siblings had left Germany before the war broke out. It was his familiarity with German philosophy and education that became pivotal to the trial, in that, in questioning the defendant, Judge Raveh forced Eichmann to assume and acknowledge responsibility for his acts in accordance with the moral law dogma prescribed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, to which Eichmann had been exposed as a student.
As an expert in Land Law, Judge Raveh later headed a parliamentary committee, named after him, the mandate of which was to overhaul Israeli rental laws including those for the protection of lodgers. Judge Raveh also engaged in academic pursuits, such as lecturing at symposia at the Tel Aviv University, publishing in law journals, and training future lawyers and judges.
After retiring from the court in 1976, Judge Raveh pursued his life-long extracurricular interests that included extensive reading, music appreciation and travel. Judge Raveh died on November 8, 1989 from complications of prostatic cancer and heart failure. His wife predeceased him in 1983. In 2011, he is survived by two daughters, three grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.