Nordheimer was born in 1809 in
Memmelsdorf in what was then the independent
Kingdom of Bavaria, which later became a part of modern
Germany. He was considered an
iluy (prodigy) as a boy and was sent to the
yeshiva at
Pressburg (Bratislava) in
Hungary, which was run by rabbi
Moses Schreiber, a leading
Orthodox Jewish religious figure. While at the
yeshiva, however, Nordheimer contracted
tuberculosis for the first time, the disease which would later cause his death. In 1828, Nordheimer left the
yeshiva aged eighteen to return home and recuperate. Hebrew scholar Shalom Goldman identifies Nordheimer as the prototype of a
maskil, a figure associated with the
Haskalah, or "Jewish Enlightenment". Nordheimer began to pursue a
secular education, entering the
gymnasium of
Würzburg. He was able to progress to the
University of Würzburg in 1830, where he stayed until 1832, focusing on study of the
philosophy of language. By late 1832, he had moved on to the
University of Munich, where he studied
philology, concentrating on
Sanskrit,
Greek,
Latin, and the
Semitic languages. He received his Ph.D. in 1834 and also successfully passed a Jewish theological exam. While at the University of Munich, Nordheimer met two Americans who sought to bring him to the United States. One of them was
Thomas Smith Grimké, a
temperance and peace advocate who promoted the use of the
Bible in schools. Grimké wished to foster better Hebrew education in the United States and promote it as a classical language similar to the status given to Greek or Latin. He planned to meet Nordheimer in New York, but before Nordheimer arrived, Grimké had died. Arriving in New York in the summer of 1835, Nordheimer decided to stay in the city and seek opportunities there rather than his original plan of travelling to
Charleston, South Carolina, as had been agreed upon with Grimké. He found opportunities teaching Hebrew in New York and became increasingly more well-known, such that in 1836, he was appointed to be the "Professor of Arabic and other Oriental Languages" at the newly-founded
University of the City of New York. Nordheimer published his first major work around this time,
A Critical Grammar of the Hebrew Language, while also teaching at the New Haven Theological Seminary. He attracted the interest of the American Biblical scholar,
Edward Robinson, who was promoting the relatively unfamiliar discipline of philology in the United States, something he had studied in Germany. Robinson had Nordheimer take over teaching his Hebrew classes at New York's
Union Theological Seminary while Robinson travelled to
Palestine to further his research, which would ultimately lead to Robinson's magnum opus, his
Biblical Researches in Palestine. Nordheimer became the first Jewish faculty member at the Union Theological Seminary, and the only Jewish faculty member to be appointed until
Abraham Joshua Heschel in the 1960s. He was also influential on
Moses Stuart and
George Bush, two American scholars who had also published books on Hebrew grammar. Stuart was complimentary in his review of Nordheimer's
Critical Grammar, and when Bush released the second edition of his
Grammar of the Hebrew Language in 1839, it incorporated philological elements, with Bush explicitly mentioning Nordheimer as an influence. It was around this time that he was joined in New York by his brothers,
Abraham and
Samuel, though they moved on to
Canada and became successful music publishers and piano dealers. Since his first bout of tuberculosis, Nordheimer's health had always been delicate. It began to decline toward the end of his life, even as he pursued a variety of treatments prescribed by physicians, along with recuperative visits to the
Saratoga mineral springs. In 1842, he was developing another major work,
A Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance to the Old Testament, of which he had released the first volume covering the letters
aleph and
bet. He taught his final class on 28 October, and died shortly after on 3 November 1842, at the age of thirty-three. He was buried at the
Congregation Shearith Israel cemetery on 21st Street in
Manhattan. Shortly after his death, a poem named "The Tomb of Nordheimer" was published in the
Semi-Weekly Courier and New York Enquirer. ==Literary works==