Background

Salo Baron was born in Tarnow, Austria (now Poland), on May 26, 1895. Baron's family was educated and affluent, part of the Jewish aristocracy of Galicia. His father was a banker and president of the Jewish community of 16, 000. Baron's first language was Polish, but he knew twenty languages, including Yiddish, Biblical and modern Hebrew, French and German, and was famous for being able to give scholarly lectures without notes - in five languages.

Education

From 1917 to 1923 he earned doctorates in philosophy, political science, and jurisprudence from the University of Vienna and a rabbinical degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna.

Career

From 1919 to 1926 he lectured at the Juedisches Paedagogium (Jewish Teachers College) in Vienna. Academic Appointments in the United States In 1926 Baron traveled to the United States, where he was appointed professor of history and librarian at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. In 1930 he became the first professor of Jewish history, literature, and institutions on the Miller Foundation at Columbia University, where he served with distinction until retiring in 1963. He was also the first director of Columbia's Center of Israel and Jewish Studies, established in 1950. After 1954 he was visiting professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1934 he had married Jeanette Meisel. Baron was an active participant in communal and cultural activities as a member of a UNESCO Commission and of the U. S. Office of Education's Citizens Federal Commission on Education. As founder and president of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Baron labored to restore libraries and reclaim Jewish cultural artifacts following World War II. He served as president of the American Academy for Jewish Research, the America Jewish Historical Society, and the Conference on Jewish Social Studies. He was a leading prosecution witness in the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, providing testimony that established the historical context underlying Nazi activities.

The prolific author of hundreds of books, articles, and reviews on topics of Jewish history, Baron is best known for his masterwork A Social and Religious History of the Jews. Originally published in three volumes in 1937, 18 volumes of a second greatly expanded and revised edition were issued between 1952 and 1983. Comprising a universal history of the Jewish people from ancient to modern times, taking social, religious, intellectual, economic, and political factors into account, as well as the interaction of Jewish with non-Jewish history, the work surpasses in scope and magnitude all previous attempts at a history of the Jewish race. In addition to the mammoth A Social and Religious History of the Jews, the 19th volume of which Baron worked on well into his 90s, his works include The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution (3 vols. , 1942), Modern Nationalism and Religion (1947), History and Jewish Historians (1964), Ancient and Medieval Jewish History: Essays (1972), and The Contemporary Relevance of History: A Study in Approaches and Methods (1986). He also edited a number of works, including Judaism, Postbiblical and Talmudic Periods (1954) and the two-volume Jubilee Volume: The American Academy for Jewish Research, a 1980 collaboration with Isaac Barzilay. From 1939 to 1989 Baron was a contributing editor of the quarterly Jewish Social Studies.

Achievements

• As professor of Jewish history at Columbia University, Baron trained a generation of Jewish scholars who later occupied chairs in Jewish studies at leading universities throughout the world. His research as well as his concern for training others contributed greatly to the advancement of Jewish scholarship, especially in the United States. At the time of his death in November 1989, Baron was hailed as "undoubtedly the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century, " by historian Yosef Hayim Yerushaimi, himself the product of Baron's tutelage and the holder of the Salo Wittmayer Baron Chair of Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia University, a position established in 1980 to honor Baron's long association with the university.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Social and Religious History of the Jews

    (Designed to accompany the 18-volume reference work, this ...)

  • The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets

    (Part of the Russian Civilization Series, this book concer...)

  • History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses

    (These thirteen essays written by Baron are interpretation...)

  • A Social and Religious History of the Jews , Vol. 13: Late Middle Ages and Era of European Expansion, 1200-1650 - Inquisition, Renaissance, and Reformation, 2nd Revised and Enlarged Edition

    (. with dustjacket, 1969, clean copy)

  • Ancient and Medieval Jewish History

    (Book by Salo Wittmayer Baron)

  • The Jewish Community
  • Modern Nationalism and Religion

Views

Quotations: "But before and after the Mongol upheaval, the Khazars sent many offshoots into the unsubdued Slavonic lands, helping ultimately to build up the great Jewish centers of eastern Europe. "

Connections

He and Jeannette Meisel married in 1934.

Spouse:

Jeannette Meisel

References

• Salo Wittmayer Baron: Architect of Jewish History (Modern Jewish Masters)