Natan M. Meir

Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian

Natan M. Meir is a historian of the modern Jewish experience and Director of The JTS Library. His scholarship focuses on the social, cultural, and religious history of European Jewry, with particular interests in Jewish communities and institutions, folklore and magic, disability history, and the ways Jews navigated the profound social and cultural changes of the modern era.

Meir is the author of Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859–1914 (2010) and Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939 (2020). He has lectured widely on Jewish history and culture in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, and the Baltic states, as well as on Jewish folklore and magic and the history of disability.

Before joining JTS, Meir was the Lorry I. Lokey Professor of Judaic Studies and academic director of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. Over the course of his career, he has combined scholarship and teaching with extensive public engagement. He has served as a museum consultant and curator, scholar-in-residence, and Jewish heritage tour expert, and has collaborated with museums, libraries, archives, cultural institutions, and Jewish communities in the United States and Central and Eastern Europe.

Meir is particularly interested in the ways cultural institutions can make Jewish history and culture accessible to broad audiences. His work in museums and public history has included exhibitions, educational programs, community initiatives, and other projects that bring historical scholarship into conversation with contemporary Jewish life. At JTS, he is committed to expanding the Library’s role as a center of Jewish learning and cultural memory and to connecting its extraordinary collections with students, scholars, educators, and the wider public.

Meir earned his BA in History and his MA, MPhil, and PhD in Jewish History from Columbia University. His current research explores folk customs of Ashkenazic Jews across modern Europe through the lenses of gender and the body.