Moses Gaster

Moses Gaster ( born September 16, 1856 in Bucharest, † March 5, 1939 in Abingdon, England) was a Sephardic Chief Rabbi ( Hacham ) England 1887-1918, Jewish scholar and folklorist.

Gaster came from a respected Jewish family in Bucharest, his grandfather was the founder of a synagogue and his father Dutch consul in Romania. Gaster was in Bucharest at the high school and studied from 1876 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau with Heinrich Graetz and Zacharias Frankel and the University of Breslau ( Oriental Studies, linguistics, biblical studies). In 1877 he received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig with a thesis on the historical phonetics of the Romanian. In 1878 he was in Berlin a member of a committee that stood up for Jewish emancipation in Romania. In 1880 he returned to Bucharest, where he dealt among other things with Romanian folk literature, which he published in 1883 his magnum opus on which he had worked for ten years and lectured on comparative mythology, Romanian language and Romanian literature at the University. In addition, he was General Inspector of schools and in teacher - testing committee. He was among the first Choveve Zion in Romania and was from 1882 to 1884 in its central committee.

Because of his public protest against the anti-Jewish policies of the Romanian government, he was expelled in 1885 from Romania. He went to London, was from 1886 to 1891 Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at Oxford University and since 1887 was a rabbi in the Portuguese ( Sephardic ) community in London despite his Ashkenazi descent. He was director of the Montefiore College in Ramsgate, which he organized after the model of the Breslau Seminary. He had a leading role in British and Jewish circles of the English Zionist movement.

The Romanian government rehabilitated him and invited him to return, but he turned down. In 1891 he received the Ordre pour le Mérite Romanian first class and he wrote for the Romanian government a report on the British school system, who was also influential in the reform of education in Romania.

He was the Vice President of the First Zionist Congress in 1897, and the second, third, fourth and seventh Congress. On the third Zionist Congress in Basel in 1899, he had with Theodor Herzl an altercation, which Gaster finally had to admit defeat argumentative. On the fourth Zionist Congress (London, 1900) held Gaster temporarily together with Max Nordau the Bureau.

Moses Gaster was a friend of Sir Francis Montefiore (1860-1935), which he won for Zionism.

As a folklorist brought Moses Gaster first editions of Hebrew and Samaritan works of the early Middle Ages out, English translations altjiddischer literature (eg the Ma'assebuch ). His private library was alongside those of Sassoon, Seligmann or Schocken one of the most impressive in the first half of the 20th century. Jewish themes and included, inter alia, thousands of valuable Hebrew, Samaritan and Slavic manuscripts. In the collection with over 2000 manuscripts were also over 10,000 fragments from the Genizah of the Ben Ezrah synagogue in Old Cairo. During World War II, when the collection was outsourced in a London cellar, they received heavy water damage - large portions, however, were previously transcribed. In 1954 she was acquired by the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester.

He was president of the Folklore Society Lore, President of the Jewish Historical Society and Vice- President of the Royal Asiatic Society.

His nephew was the physicist John Ziman.

Writings

  • Studies and Texts in Folklore -Lore, Magic, Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology, three volumes, London, Maggs Brothers, 1925-1928 ( collection of his essays ), reprint New York 1971
  • Literatura română populara, Bucharest 1883 ( his story of the Romanian folk literature )
  • Chrestomaţia română, 2 volumes, Brockhaus, Leipzig, Bucharest, 1892
  • The Samaritans. Their history, doctrines and literature, Oxford University Press 1925
  • Samaritan law and ancient oral traditions, The Search Publishing Company, London 1932
  • The sword of Moses. An ancient book of Magic, London, 1896 Dutt
  • Editor and translator of ha -Levi ben El ` azar Asher The chronicles of Jerahmeel, London, Royal Asiatic Society 1899
  • Publisher The example of the ' rabbis, London, Leipzig, Asia Pub. Comp. 1924
  • Edited and translated from the Yiddish: Ma'aseh book - book of Jewish tales and legends, 2 volumes, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America 1934
  • Publisher Hebrew illuminated Bibles of the IXth and Xth centuries ( or codices. Gaster, no 150 and 151 ), London, Harrison and Sons 1901
  • Publisher The tittled Bible, a model codex of the Pentateuch, reproduced in facsimile from ms. no 85 of the Gaster collection now in the British museum, with a dissertation on the history of the tittles, Their origin, date and Significance, London, Maggs Brothers 1929
  • Jewish Folk -Lore in the Middle Ages, London 1887
  • History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, London 1901 ( commemorative ribbon for the 200th anniversary of the Bevis Marks Synagogue)
Abingdon-on-Thames Wrocław Zecharias Frankel Hovevei Zion Sassoon family Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Integrated Authority File
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