Alexander Altmann (April 16, 1906 – June 6, 1987) was an Orthodox Jewish scholar and rabbi born in Kassa, Austria-Hungary (present-day Košice, Slovakia).

He emigrated to England in 1938 and later settled in the United States, working productively for a decade and a half as a professor within the Philosophy Department at Brandeis University.

[1] He also made important contributions to the study of Jewish mysticism, and for a large part of his career he was the only scholar in the United States working on this subject in a purely academic setting.

[2] Among the many Brandeis students whose work he supervised in this area were Elliot Wolfson, Arthur Green, Heidi Ravven, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Lawrence Fine, and Daniel Matt.

There, in addition to his responsibilities as a community leader, he continued to independently pursue his scholarly studies, publishing in 1946 a translation and commentary of Saadia's Beliefs and Opinions.

During his entire residence in the Boston area (Newton Centre to be precise), he always made his home a meeting place for Jewish scholars and students,[7] often hosting them for Sabbath meals.

Lawrence Fine tells of attending a class on Coptic language given at Brandeis University in the early seventies, only to find there—as a fellow student—the 65-year-old Altmann, eager to acquire a new skill.

Among his goals in undertaking his work on Mendelssohn were the restoration to this important Jewish figure his rightful recognition as an original philosopher and profound reasoner, not just a popularizer of Enlightenment thought.