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Joseph M. Baumgarten (Vienna, September 7, 1928 – December 4, 2008) was an Austrian-born Semitic scholar known for his knowledge in the field of Jewish legal texts from biblical law to Mishnaic law and including the legal texts among theDead Sea Scrolls.Baumgarten immigrated to the United States with his family in 1939 as a result of theAnschluss, Germany's occupation ofAustria in 1938. In 1950, he was ordained a rabbi atMesivta Torah Vodaath, a prominent Brooklyn yeshiva. He married Naomi Rosenberg in 1953.
Baumgarten started his studies in the field of mathematics with a B.A. cum laude fromBrooklyn College. It was a chance meeting atJohns Hopkins withWilliam Foxwell Albright that caused him to change direction, eventually being awarded a Ph.D. inSemitic studies in 1954. His dissertation was entitled "The Covenant Sect and the Essenes." From 1952 to 1957 he remained at Johns Hopkins teaching Aramaic. In 1953, he began his long association withBaltimore Hebrew College. He also took on the role of rabbi to the Bnai Jacob Congregation in 1959. Throughout his life, he was a member of theRabbinical Council of America, a major organization of Orthodox rabbis.
Prof. Baumgarten served as visiting professor at Towson State College (nowTowson University, theUniversity of Maryland) and the University of the Negev (nowBen-Gurion University of the Negev) in Israel. He was also in residence at theIsrael Institute for Advanced Studies of theHebrew University ofJerusalem in 1990 and again in 2001. He was a fellow at the Annenberg Institute (now theKatz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of theUniversity of Pennsylvania) inPhiladelphia in 1992–1993.
1953 saw the first of his publications on theDead Sea Scrolls. Essays from the early period of his study were collected in 1977,Studies in Qumran Law (Leiden:Brill Publishers, 1977). His knowledge of Qumran legal matters was probably the reason whyJohn Strugnell gave him the task of publishing the Cave 4 fragments of theDamascus Document. His work on theDamascus Document not only brought its manuscripts to publication but provided the basis for understanding it within the framework of the history ofJudaism.
Afestschrift was presented to him in 1995:Legal Texts and Legal Issues, Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge 1995, Published in Honour of Joseph M. Baumgarten, edited by M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, J. Kampen (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
His publications include:
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