Biography of Selig Adler |
Selig Adler 1909-1984 It
is unfortunate that the Jewish community is not acquainted with this great
scholar. The reason for this ignorance is, of course, the general
contempt for scholarship in the United States. While European Jews held scholars
in high regard, so that Israel Kagan, the author of Chofez
Chayim, was known by the name of his most famous book, as was the author of
Chasam Sofer and other great writers, we have no use for such scholars, as we
worship the rich who dominate all our institutions and synagogues. Selig
Adler was born in Baltimore, MD on January 33, 1909. The
Adler family lived in Bavaria during the nineteenth century; some family members
immigrated to the United States before 1900. Among them was the salesman Josef
Gabriel Adler, born May 9, 1873 in Kitzingen, Germany. From 1893 on he lived in
Baltimore, Maryland, and on February 19, 1907 he married May Rubenstein; he died
in 1925. They had one son, Selig Adler, who became a professor of history at the
University of Buffalo. Other family members included an elder Josef Gabriel
Adler (1802-1873), who was a rabbi in Aschaffenburg and Immanuel Adler
(1840-1911), rabbi in Kitzingen. Selig
Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1909. Except for graduate work, his
entire collegiate career from student to professor was spent in Buffalo. A summa
cum laude graduate of the University of Buffalo in 1931, he received the masters
and doctorate degrees from the University of Illinois in 1932 and 1934
respectively. He was appointed to the history faculty of the University of
Buffalo in 1938, he became a full professor in 1952, and in 1958 he was named
Samuel Paul Capen Professor of American History and held the honor until his
retirement in 1980. This accomplished historian, teacher, and scholar authored
numerous scholarly publications and served the university not only in the
classroom through his teaching and research but also by participating in
numerous committees and appointed leadership positions. Among his published
works are: The Isolationist Impulse: Its
Twentieth-Century Reaction (1957) and The
Uncertain Giant, 1921-1941: American Foreign Policy Between the Wars (1965).
Professor Adler was also the co-author, with Thomas E. Connolly, of: From
Ararat to Suburbia: The History of the Jewish Community of Buffalo (1960).
In 1975 he was named a State University of New York "Distinguished Service
Professor". In 1980, Adler became the archivist of the Jewish Federation of
Greater Buffalo, and thus the archivist for the Buffalo Jewish community. He
died in Buffalo N.Y. on November 8, 1984. Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Gender, Sex, & Status (2019). |