EZRA FLEISCHER, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University, has passed away. May his memory be for a blessing.

UPDATE (3 August): The New York Times has an obituary:

Ezra Fleischer, Expert on Hebrew Poetry, Is Dead at 78

By ARI L. GOLDMAN
Published: August 1, 2006

Professor Ezra Fleischer, an Israeli poet and scholar whose work on a long-forgotten trove of ancient Jewish manuscripts helped shed new light on the development of the early synagogue and Jewish prayer, died last Tuesday in Jerusalem. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he taught for many years.

Professor Fleischer was among the major scholars who studied and cataloged the Cairo Geniza, a treasury of documents, some of which dated to the first century A.D., discovered by Western scholars in a synagogue in Old Cairo the late 1800’s. ...

Dr. Ruth Langer, associate professor of Jewish Studies at Boston College called Professor Fleischer “a path-breaking scholar who unpacked the liturgical passages of the geniza.” He was said to have worked on 60,000 fragments over 40 years.

His major contribution, Dr. Langer said, was to demonstrate that Jewish prayer as it is known today was first developed by the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70. Until Professor Fleischer’s work, the prevailing scholarly understanding was that the prayers had emerged earlier, in the synagogues of the Second Temple period.

[...]

(Via the Agade list.)