Cyrus Adler, 1863-1940

Abstract

Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of the Dropsie College in Philadelphia and of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, died on April 7, 1940. He was next to the senior member of this Society in point of membership, having entered it in his twenty-first year, and so possibly the youngest member ever admitted. He took his full and active part in the Society's activities, as member, contributor to the JOURNAL, Trustee, and he achieved its highest honor in election to its Presidency in 1923. But he has uniquely distinguished us by his creative abilities and his world-wide activities. He was the first scholar to be enrolled in Professor Paul Haupt's novel Semitic Seminar at the Johns Hopkins University in 1883, immediately after graduation from the College of the University of Pennsylvania. He became the first recipient in America of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Semitics. He continued his scholarly work as Curator of the United States National Museum and Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution. He played an important and initiative part in the Centennial Exposition at Cincinnati in 1888, and the International Exposition at Chicago in 1892. He was an active member of the small and determined groups that founded the Seminary and the College, of both of which he became ultimately the President. His contemporary activities are amazing. He took part in the initiation and editorship of the Jewish Quarterly Review (in its American continuation), the Jewish Year Book, the Jewish Encyclopaedia, and of the version of The Holy Scriptures, done by Jewish scholars, of notable value for all readers of the Bible. The benevolence of his character appears in his devoted and capable concern for his own people in the sad catastrophes that have befallen them in our own day, a concern marked by wisdom and equity to all, the history of which can only be alluded to here, although that concern was the nearest to his heart. From his youth a man in public life, and engaged in important official commissions, his worth was crowned by President Roosevelt in his appointment of him as representative of his religion in the Inter-Faith Commission, organized to unite all spiritual elements of our nation to confront the present chaos. A Prince is fallen in Israel, and his loss is that of the world; but most acutely that of his family, to whom we send our deep sympathy out of our own deep sense of loss.