Meyer, Isidore S.

Isidore Solomon Meyer was born on November 19, 1903 in New London, Connecticut to Rachel Pearl (Ritt) Meyer and Max Meyer, recent immigrants from a region identified alternately as Russia, Lithuania or Poland on official documentation. In 1918, Meyer moved to Manhattan to attend the Talmudical Academy, graduating in 1922 and going on to earn a B.A. from the City College of New York in 1925. He completed graduate work at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where he received an M.A. in history in 1928 and was ordained as a rabbi in 1929. While working towards a doctoral degree at Columbia, Meyer studied Jewish history in Berlin and Jerusalem at the University of Berlin, Hochschule für Wissenschaft des Judentums and Hebrew University (1929-1930). Meyer does not seem to have completed his doctoral dissertation, but in 1961 the JTS awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity.

Meyer’s career as a librarian began at the JTS library, where he worked part-time as a student (1926-1928) and managed their museum exhibits (1931-1932). He also worked as an assistant research editor at Columbia University’s Casa Italiana Educational Bureau (1933-1934). In the mid-1930s he taught Jewish history classes at Brooklyn College, the School of the Jewish Woman and the Brooklyn Jewish Center’s Institute of Jewish Studies for Adults.

At the 1937 annual meeting of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), Meyer delivered a paper titled, “Hebrew at Harvard,” and Cyrus Adler encouraged him to pursue such research further. Ottoman Jewry and 16th century rabbinical responsa had been the focal points of Meyer’s masters and doctoral work, but after the 1937 meeting, his scholarly interests definitively shifted to the use, study and influence of Hebrew language and thought in early American education and democracy. Meyer often cited this Adler-inspired turn in his research and three subsequent publications in 1939 as major factors leading to his appointment as AJHS librarian, archivist and editor by AJHS President A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1940.

As librarian and archivist, Meyer headed the post-WWII Committee on Books for Devastated and Other Libraries Abroad of the Jewish Book Council of America; served as the vice president of the Jewish Librarians Association; and was a member of the Manuscript Society, the American Association of State and Local History, and the Executive Council of the Jewish Book Council of America. Meyer held the position of librarian at AJHS until 1962, continuing on as archivist until 1968. As the editor of AJHS from 1940 to 1968, Meyer oversaw Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish History Quarterly, and AJHS’s monographs from 1940 through 1968. In addition to his editorial, library and archival duties, Meyer also planned annual meetings and coordinated exhibits for AJHS. In 1968, the year AJHS moved from New York to Massachusetts, Meyer retired, at which point he was given the title of Editor Emeritus and later voted an Honorary Member of AJHS. He worked as a consultant for the In-Service Course cosponsored by AJHS and the Jewish Teachers Association until approximately 1979.

Alongside his AJHS work and historical research and writing, Meyer was engaged as a rabbi at the Jewish Center of Bay Shore, Long Island (1937-1943) and Congregation Sons of Israel in Palisades Park, New Jersey (1944-1948). He also served as secretary of the Bergen County Section, New Jersey Region of the United Synagogue of America, as editor of the Rabbinical Assembly of America’s Bulletin, and was a member of the New York Board of Rabbis.

In 1938, Meyer married Hannah Myers, a social worker and native of Texas who had studied at the Training School for Jewish Social Work and the New York School of Social Work. The Meyers had one son, Jonathan, in 1944. Hannah Myers Meyer died in 1983, and Isidore Meyer died on September 15, 1992.

From the guide to the Isidore Meyer Papers, 1848-1992 (bulk 1925-1980), (American Jewish Historical Society)