Menahem Schmelzer (z”l)

Biography

University of Budapest; The Jewish Theological Seminary of Hungary; MA, Copenhagen University; Library Diploma, State Library School, Denmark; DHL, The Jewish Theological Seminary; DHL (hon.), Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies

Menahem Schmelzer was Albert B. and Bernice Cohen Professor Emeritus of Medieval Hebrew Literature and Jewish Bibliography at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He served as a full-time member of the JTS faculty beginning in 1961 and was librarian from 1964 to 1987.

Dr. Schmelzer’s articles include “On Hebrew Wedding Poems in Medieval Ashkenaz” (Essays on Hebrew Literature in Honor of Avraham Holtz, 2003), “How Was the High Priest Kept Awake on the Night of Yom Ha-Kippurim?” (Saul Lieberman, edited by M. Lubetski, 2002), and “The Contribution of the Genizah to the Study of Liturgy and Poetry” (Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 1997–2001).

In addition to writing numerous articles and reviews for scholarly journals, Dr. Schmelzer was associate division editor of the “Modern Jewish Scholarship” section of Encyclopaedia Judaica. He lectured at the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1992, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1999, he was the recipient of an honorary degree from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. He was appointed distinguished visiting senior scholar at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress for a four-month period in 2004.