Harry Austryn Wolfson

Harry Austryn Wolfson (November 2, 1887 – September 19, 1974), born Zvi Hershel ben Mendel Wolfson, was an American philosopher and historian at Harvard University, where he became the first chair of a Jewish Studies Center in the United States. Best known for his seminal work on the Jewish philosopher Philo, Wolfson also produced major studies on Crescas and Spinoza, examined Averroes and Maimonides in the context of medieval and early modern thought, and wrote on the Kalam, the Church Fathers, and the foundations of Western religion. He aimed to bridge Jewish philosophy with Christian philosophy and Islamic philosophy. As the first Judaica scholar to spend his entire career at a top university, Wolfson embodied the ambitions of the 19th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums (science of Judaism, or Jewish studies) movement.

Biography

Wolfson was born to Sarah Savitsky and Max Mendel Wolfson in Astryna (Yiddish: Ostrin), Vilna Governorate (in present-day Shchuchyn district, Grodno Region, Belarus), and in his youth he studied at the Slabodka yeshiva under Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein. He emigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1903. They settled in New York's East Side. Wolfson was invited to teach Hebrew to children in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which he did for three years while earning his diploma from Scranton High School. Wolfson took the entrance examination for Harvard College and won admission.

In September 1908, Wolfson arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, where, it would turn out, he would remain for the rest of his career.