Alexander Altmann

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Alexander Altmann

Alexander Altmann (April 16, 1906 – June 6, 1987) was an

Paul Mendes-Flohr, Lawrence Fine, and Daniel Matt
.

Biography

Altmann was a son of Malwine Weisz and Adolf Altmann (1879-1944), the Chief Rabbi of

Saadia
's Beliefs and Opinions. His scholarly activities ultimately led him to found and direct the
Institute of Jewish Studies from 1953 to 1958, which at the time was an independent institution. He there edited the Journal of Jewish Studies and Scripta Judaica and authored his work on Isaac Israeli. While Altmann was at Manchester, Bert Trautmann, a former soldier for Nazi Germany and prisoner of war, was being considered as a player for Manchester City Football Club, which had many Jewish fans; Altmann approved, despite the Nazis having killed his parents and other family members. Altmann's intervention may have been decisive for the unprecedented acceptance of a former P.O.W. into the team. Trautmann went on to become a very successful goalkeeper.[3]

After securing the future of the Institute of Jewish Studies by bringing it under the auspices of the

Vatican Hebraica collection on microfilm.[6]

From 1976 to 1978 Altmann was a visiting professor at

Newton Centre to be precise), he always made his home a meeting place for Jewish scholars and students,[7] often hosting them for Sabbath meals. Altmann's thirst for new knowledge never abated, even in his later years. Lawrence Fine tells of attending a class on Coptic language given at Brandeis University in the early seventies, only to find there—as a fellow student—the 65-year-old Altmann, eager to acquire a new skill.[2]

In 1983 Professor Altmann joined a newly-established Orthodox synagogue in Newton, Massachusetts, Congregation Shaarei Tefillah. He served as senior member of the synagogue’s Rabbinical Committee, whose other members were his Brandeis colleagues, Professors Nahum Sarna and Marvin Fox, Professor Lester Segal of UMass Boston, and Professor Louis Dickstein of Wellesley College.

In addition to regular attendance at synagogue services and committee meetings, Professor Altmann delivered memorable sermons and learned lectures. He also described his experiences as a pulpit rabbi in Berlin in the 1930s, when he delivered messages of support to growing numbers of Jews finding their way back to synagogue life in the face of the growing Nazi threat. He had to encode these messages, to avoid provoking Gestapo agents in attendance to monitor homiletic subversion. As observed by his dear friend, Professor Jacob Katz, in a eulogy that later appeared in print, Professor Altmann was deeply invigorated by the opportunities afforded him by Shaarei Tefillah to deliver sermons and learned discourses once again in a synagogue setting.

He left Germany with his family in 1938 to accept a rabbinical post in Manchester, England. As a candidate for the position, he was expected to give a sermon there in English. He wrote it out in German and presented it in translation. By 1983 he had not just mastered English but learned to speak it with remarkable eloquence.(≤https://www.shaarei.org/≥)

Altmann died in Boston, U.S.A. on June 6, 1987.

Works

In his long academic career, Altmann produced a number of important works in

Hebrew, some of which are listed below. For a brief period of time in his early career he involved himself with the construction of a Jewish theology, but this work was left unfinished, and his primary interests turned to medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism, and particularly the work of the iconoclastic Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Among his goals in undertaking his work on Mendelssohn were the restoration to this important Jewish figure his rightful recognition as an original philosopher and profound reasoner, not just a popularizer of Enlightenment thought.[1] His work on Isaac Israeli, the first medieval Jewish philosopher, likewise rescued this thinker from what he saw as undeserved obscurity.[6]

In his Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics (1986), Altmann differed with Shlomo Pines' 1979 interpretation of Maimonides as a philosophical skeptic, arguing that Maimonides saw genuine value in the philosophical enterprise, and believed it could yield genuine truths.[6]

A complete bibliography of Altmann's nearly 250 published works is presented in Bibliography of the published writings of Alexander Altmann.[8] Some of the most popular are listed below:

  • Saadya Gaon
    : Book of Doctrines and Beliefs     (abridged edition translated from the Arabic with an introduction and notes), in Three Jewish Philosophers, Atheneum, New York, 1969
  • with Samuel Miklos Stern: Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century. His Works Translated with Comments and an Outline of His Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1958, reprinted, Greenwood Press, 1979.
  • Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations, Harvard University Press, 1966.
  • Moses Mendelssohn's Fruehschriften zur Metaphysik, Mohr (Tuebingen, Germany), 1969.
  • Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, Cornell University Press, 1969.
  • Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study, University of Alabama Press, 1973.
  • Essays in Jewish Intellectual History, University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 1981.
  • Essays in Judaism (in Hebrew), Tel-Aviv, 1982.'
  • Altmann, Alexander, and Alfred L. Ivry. The Meaning of Jewish Existence: Theological Essays, 1930-1939. [Waltham, Mass.]: Brandeis University Press, 1991.

References

  1. ^
    Secker & Warburg
    , pp. 415–420
  2. ^ a b Fine, Lawrence (1989), "Alexander Altmann's contribution to the study of Jewish mysticism", in Arnold Paucker (ed.), Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXXIV, London: Secker & Warburg, pp. 421–431
  3. ^ Glanville, Brian (20 July 2013). "Bert Trautmann obituary". Guardian newspaper. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
  4. Mendes-Flohr
    , Paul (1998), "Jewish scholarship as a vocation", in Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson & Allan Arkush (ed.), Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism: Proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary, Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers
  5. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 May 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2011.
  6. ^ a b c Ivry, Alfred L. (1989), "The contribution of Alexander Altmann to the study of medieval Jewish philosophy", in Arnold Paucker (ed.), Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXXIV, London: Secker & Warburg, pp. 433–440
  7. Harwood Academic Publishers
  8. ^ Altman, Manfred (1998), "Bibliography of the published writings of Alexander Altmann", in Alfred L. Ivry, Elliot R. Wolfson & Allan Arkush (ed.), Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism: Proceedings of the International Conference held by The Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, 1994, in Celebration of its Fortieth Anniversary, Australia: Harwood Academic Publishers

External links

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