Cyrus Adler (September 13, 1863 – April 7, 1940[1]) was an American educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar.
Early years
Adler was born to merchant and planter Samuel Adler and Sarah Sulzberger[2] in Van Buren, Arkansas on September 13, 1863, but in the next year his parents removed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and soon he attended the public schools there, and in 1879 he entered the University of Pennsylvania, from where he graduated in 1883.[3] Afterwards, he pursued Oriental studies in Johns Hopkins University, where he was appointed university scholar in 1884, and fellow in Semitic languages from 1885 to 1887.[3] He earned the first American PhD in Semitics from the University in 1887[4][5] and was appointed instructor in Semitic languages and promoted to associate professor in 1890.[3] He taught Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins from 1884 to 1893.
Adler was an editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia and in collaboration with Allen Ramsay wrote Tales Told in a Coffee House (1898).[6] He was part of the committee that translated the Jewish Publication Society version of the Hebrew Bible published in 1917. At the end of World War I, he participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
^Dictionary of American Library Biography. (1978). Bohdan Wynar, ed. "Adler, Cyrus (1863–1940)." Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 3–5. ISBN0-87287-180-0
Schwartz, Shuly Rubin. The Emergence of Jewish Scholarship in America: The Publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, Number 13. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1991. ISBN0-87820-412-1
Further reading
Adler, Cyrus. I Have Considered the Days. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941.
Neuman, Abraham A.Cyrus Adler: A Biographical Sketch. New York: The American Jewish Committee, 1942.