Isadore Twersky

Isadore Twersky (Yitzchak (Isaac) Asher Twersky) (October 9, 1930 – October 12, 1997) was an Orthodox rabbi and the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, a chair previously held by Harry Austryn Wolfson. 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 12th-century Jewish legalist and philosopher Maimonides. His best-known works are, 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), 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. According to Hacker (2005), Twersky can best be characterized as a "historian of ideas and a researcher of the intellectual history of the Jews," and would presumably have considered himself as such.

Twersky was born in Boston in 1930, and attended Boston Latin School and Hebrew College, which was then known as Hebrew Teachers' College. His Torah knowledge was largely acquired through diligent private study rather than formal yeshiva instruction (Hacker 2005). 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.

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