The sudden death of Alan Mintz from a heart attack came as a devastating shock. Youthful and fit at age 69, Alan’s energy and eagerness for life and learning seemed indestructible. Alan, Chana Kekst Professor of Jewish Literature at the JTS in New York and one of the preeminent scholars of Hebrew literature, began his scholarly career as a student of English literature, but he soon moved to Jewish Studies. He taught at Brandeis University and the University of Maryland before joining the faculty of the JTS in New York in 2001 where he remained until his death.
In 1981, Alan co-founded and co-edited Prooftexts, which became the leading journal in the field of Hebrew and Jewish literature. He published books and a multitude of articles on Hebrew literature and culture, Hebrew autobiography and recently, the Hebraist movement in America. Many of his books have become standard texts in university literature courses. He was devoted to the Hebrew language and to Israel. His greatest literary passion was the Hebrew writer S Y Agnon whose works he returned to time and again and with which he felt a profound personal affinity. Indeed, Alan’s last published work is the first full-length study of Agnon’s great posthumous opus, The City and its Fullness. At the time of his death, Alan had just begun a literary biography of Agnon.
In his younger years, Alan was a Jewish activist. He was an exceptional teacher, a mentor to his students and colleagues, with a great and engaging enthusiasm for scholarly conversation and an astounding breadth of knowledge. But his life was not all teaching, writing and learning: he was a devoted family man, a beloved and hospitable friend, a superb cook and also a fan of classical ballet.
To quote Alan’s close friend, co-editor and colleague David Roskies,
We are left with the void – the emptiness of an intellectual, spiritual, and communal life without him – not just here, but from the e-mails I’ve been getting, in Israel, from Australia and Canada, in short, wherever matters of the Jewish spirit matter.