| AdminHistory | Born Posen, 1770; received a traditional Jewish education; came to England as a young man and found work giving religious instruction and Hebrew lessons to Jewish boys at a Christian-run academy, where he broadened his own education by studying science and the classics; opened the Highgate Academy, a Jewish boys' boarding school, 1799; became a close friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge; wrote Hebrew dirges on the deaths of Princess Charlotte in 1817 and George III in 1820, which were chanted at the Great Synagogue and subsequently translated into English verse by Coleridge and printed; elected professor of Hebrew language and literature at University College, London, 1828, the first professing Jew anywhere to hold such a position; died 1844. Publications include: 'Vindiciae Hebraicae, being a Defence of the Hebrew Scriptures as a Vehicle of Revealed Religion' (1820); 'Hebrew Tales: Selected and Translated from the Writings of the Hebrew Sages' (1826); 'The Etymology and Syntax in Continuation of the Elements of the Hebrew Language (1831); 'A Grammar of the Hebrew Language' (1831); 'A Letter to Isaac L. Goldsmid ... on Certain Recent Mis-statements Regarding the Jewish Religion' (1833). |
| CustodialHistory | Formerly held with other Jewish collections in the Mocatta Library of University College London. |