Isadore Twersky

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Isadore Twersky (1930–October 12, 1997) was the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University.

Twersky was an internationally recognized authority on Rabbinic literature and Jewish philosophy. He was especially known as an expert in the writings and influence of the twelfth century Jewish legalist and philosopher Maimonides. His best known works were his magisterial and seminal study An Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah), and the more popular anthology, "A Maimonides Reader." He was the editor of the Harvard Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (in three volumes). He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, and was a fellow of both the American Academy for Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Twersky was born in Boston in 1930, and attended both Boston Latin School, Boston Hebrew College, which was then known as Hebrew Teachers' College. He graduated from Harvard in 1952, where he majored in history. In 1949, he was one of the first students to spend a year abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he developed relationships with such scholarly and literary giants as Gershom Scholem, Yitzhak Baer, Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson and Nobel Prize winner, S. Y. Agnon. Upon his graduation from Harvard he began studies toward a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, under the guidance of the legendary scholar of medieval philosophy, Harry Austryn Wolfson. His doctorate was on the twelfth century Provencal Talmudist, Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (Rabad), and was subsequently published.

Twersky was a pioneer in the introduction of the methodology of the History of ideas, first developed by Arthur O. Lovejoy into Jewish Intellectual history. He also devoted special emphasis upon the interaction between law and spirituality in the History of Judaism.

He founded the Center for Jewish Studies in 1978 and served as its director until 1993.

At Harvard, Twersky taught both undergraduate and graduate students. His popular course, Moderation and Extremism, which compared and contrasted the paths to virtue in the works of Aristotle, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas, drew over 200 students in 1995, the final year it was taught. Over the course of his thirty years at Harvard, he taught a large number of graduate students. His exacting standards and expectations were legendary. Nevertheless, over thirty individuals completed their doctorates under his guidance. Many of these play leading roles in Jewish studies, both in North America and in Israel. Among these are Bernard Septimus, Carmi Horowitz, Bernard Cooperman, Marc Saperstein, Lois Dubin, Allan Nadler, Steven Harvey, David Malkiel, Daniel Frank, Adena Tannenbaum, Talya Fishman, Jeffrey Woolf, Edward Breuer, Eric Lawee and Moshe Berger.

He was the son of the Talner Rebbe, an offshoot of the Hasidic Dynasty of Chernobil, and the son-in-law of Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. In the last twenty years of his life, he also functioned as a Hasidic Rebbe. His oldest son Rabbi Moshe Twersky is a Ram at Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Jerusalem. His younger son, Rabbi Mayer Twersky is one of the Roshei Yeshiva in Yeshiva University. His daughter Tzipporah Rosenblatt is a lawyer. She is married to Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Rosenblatt, who serves as the rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York City.