(JTA) — Alan Mintz, a professor of Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary has died at the age of 69 as a result of a heart attack, which he suffered Saturday night after swimming at a gym near his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Mintz focused on Hebrew literature in America, the Hebrew writer and Nobel laureate S. Y. Agnon and responses to the Holocaust and other historical tragedies in Hebrew literature and popular culture. His many books include “Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America” (2001), “Translating Israel: Contemporary Hebrew Literature and Its Reception in America” (2001) and “Reading Hebrew Literature” (editor, 2002). Mintz was a recipient of multiple awards for his scholarship and was recently made a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies.