Levi

Who is Levi?

Levi/Levy was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi. Certain religious and political functions were reserved for the Levites, and the early sources of the Torah—the Jahwist and Elohist—appear to treat the term Levi as just being a word meaning priest; scholars therefore suspect that "levi" was originally a general term for a priest, and had no connection to ancestry, and that it was only later, for example in the priestly source and Blessing of Moses, that the existence of a tribe named Levi became assumed, in order to explain the origin of the priestly caste.