author
Isaac Myer
1836–1902
A Philadelphia-born lawyer with wide-ranging scholarly interests, he wrote some of the earliest substantial English-language studies of Kabbalah in the United States. His books also wandered into constitutional history, dreams, and ancient Egyptian symbolism.
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About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1836, he worked as an attorney and wrote in both Philadelphia and New York City. Archival and library records describe him not only as a lawyer and author, but also as an amateur historian, orientalist, and active Freemason.
His writing moved across an unusually broad range of subjects. In addition to legal and constitutional topics, he published Qabbalah in 1888, a major early English-language American study of Jewish mysticism, and later wrote Scarabs, a detailed work on the history and symbolism of the scarab in the ancient world.
What makes his work memorable now is that mix of legal training and wide curiosity: he approached religion, antiquity, and symbolism with the habits of a self-taught researcher who clearly liked following difficult subjects wherever they led. He died in 1902.