Born in Ungvar (Uzhgorod), Hungary (now in the
Ukraine), he studied at the Pressburg (now Bratislava, in Slovakia) yeshiva, the
Berlin Rabbinical Seminary and Berlin University. His area of expertise was the
study of medieval Hebrew poetry and Sephardi piyyutim. His goal was to publish
editions of all the major medieval Hebrew poets and he edited the diwans of some
of them including Shelomo Ibn Gabirol, Shemuel ha-Nagid and Moshe Ibn Ezra.
While rabbi in Nachod, Hungary, he became an ardent Zionist and headed the
Hungarian Mizrachi organization. In 1905, Brody went to Prague where he became
chief rabbi in 1912. In 1930, Salman Schocken founded the Institute for the
Research of Hebrew Poetry and Brody went to Berlin to head it, moving with it to
Jerusalem in 1933.
