BAJS Bulletin 2012: Contents in Memoriam Raphael Loewe
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BAJS Bulletin 2012: Contents In memoriam Raphael Loewe In memoriam Raphael Loewe 1 Raphael Loewe Memorial Lecture 3 Jewish Studies in Canterbury 8 BAJS Conference 2013 9 News 10 BAJS Conference 2012 11 BAJS Committee 16 BAJS Survey 2011: Some Remarks 17 BAJS Survey 2012 18 Ongoing doctoral research 66 Members’ recent publications 70 Raphael Loewe, BAJS President 1998 Reviews 75 Photo: Donald Verry The British Association for Jewish Studies Eulogy delivered during the 2011 BAJS conference (BAJS) was founded in 1975 as a learned in Oxford by Nicholas De Lange society and professional organization on a non-profit-making basis. Its aims are to Raphael Loewe died on 27 May 2011, aged 92. nurture, cultivate and ad-vance the teaching He was an outstanding Hebrew scholar, who con- and research in Jewish culture and history in tributed enormously to the academic pursuit of Hebrew and Jewish studies, in Britain and further all its aspects within Higher Educa-tion in the afield. He was also a sensitive poet and translator, British Isles. as witnessed by a recent volume of his collected poetical works. Contact: He was a founder member of BAJS, and served as BAJS Secretariat President. He was also president of the Jewish Lars Fischer Historical Society of England and of the Society for CJCR Old Testament Study. He was a Fellow of the Royal Wesley House Asiatic Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. Jesus Lane Raphael had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Cambridge CB5 8BJ every branch of the Judaic heritage in all its periods, but his special love was the literary heritage of Sefarad. He was a brilliant exponent of Bulletin editors: that heritage, which he made somehow part of Lars Fischer ([email protected]) himself: he mastered the complex language and Emma Harris ([email protected]) metres of the Hebrew poets of Spain, and brought them back to life in innumerable poems and If you have not already done so, please sign up translations, surmounting the literary challenges to the BAJS website! with dazzling dexterity, and embodying his own http://britishjewishstudies.org subtle and complex religious philosophy. Raphael’s great-grandfather, Louis Loewe If you are affiliated with a university, please also (1809–1880), was a secretary and close confidant complete our survey at: to the philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, and http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6TZGLPK accompanied him on his journeys to the Ottoman BAJS Bulletin 2012 · 1 Empire, Russia and Egypt to obtain better of all the liturgical poems, closely followed by treatment for the Jewish communities there. Solomon ibn Gabirol (1989), a masterly Raphael’s father, Herbert Loewe (1882–1940), was introduction to the life and thought of a man who himself a distinguished Hebrew scholar, who from was in many ways an inspiration for Loewe 1931 until his early death in 1940 held the post of himself, and which again contains many verse Reader in Rabbinics in Cambridge. translations. His most ambitious and probably Raphael was born in 1919 in Calcutta, where his most enduring book is his edition and translation father was serving in the army. He was educated at of Isaac Ibn Sahula’s Meshal Haqadmoni, Fables the Dragon School, Oxford, and at the Leys School, from the Distant Past (2004). His last book was a Cambridge. He won a major classical scholarship collection of more than a hundred of his Hebrew to St John’s College, Cambridge, and gained a First Poems and Translations (2010). Common themes in Part I of the Classical Tripos, as well as the John run through all these varied publications, notably a Stewart Hebrew Scholarship, before being called boundless, serious yet occasionally playful respect up for war service in 1940. He initially joined the for the past, specifically the Sefardi past, combined Pioneer Corps, and later the Suffolk Regiment and with a fascination for the Hebrew and English the Royal Armoured Corps. As an Intelligence languages and the interplay between them. Officer in the RAC in North Africa he was awarded Apart from the books he has left us well over a the Military Cross in 1943, for ‘running through hundred articles and occasional pieces, some of enemy fire … quite regardless of his personal which are of lasting importance. Their range is safety’ to rescue the crew of a burning tank and extraordinary. I don’t want to read out a catalogue, inform his commander of an impending attack. He but let me just mention his early articles on later served in Italy, where he received a wound Christian hebraism: Two articles on Herbert of that left him with a permanent limp. Bosham (1953); the Superscriptio Lincolniensis His first academic post was as a Lecturer in (1957); Alexander Neckam (1958). Then Hebrew at Leeds. His long association with Uni- important contributions to Rabbinics, such as: ‘The versity College London began with an appointment “Plain” meaning of scripture in early Jewish to a temporary lectureship in the Hebrew exegesis’ (1965)’; ‘Apologetic motifs in the Targum Department in 1961; he was made a Lecturer in to the Song of Songs’ (1966); ‘Rabbi Joshua ben 1966, Senior Lecturer in 1969, Reader in 1970 and Hananhiah: LlD or Dlitt?’ (1974). Professor in 1981. He retired in 1984, as I should particularly like to recommend his Goldsmid’s Professor of Hebrew. general reflections on the nature of Judaism: He also lectured at Leo Baeck College. That was ‘Defining Judaism’ (1965); ‘Potentialities and where I first encountered him, as a young student limitations of universalism in the Halakhah’ half a century ago. I can still remember his lectures (1966); ‘Judaism in a secular age’ (1967); on Mishnah Pesahim. To get the most out of them ‘“Salvation” is not of the Jews’ (1981); ‘Credat you needed to know Greek and Arabic as well as Judaeus Apella?’ (1999); ‘Imitation and ethics in Hebrew and Aramaic. Generations of his students Judaism and Christianity’ (2006). recall with mingled awe and delight his encyclo- Nor should we dismiss his characteristic jeux paedic knowledge, somewhat old-fashioned d’esprit or footnotes to scholarship, such as ‘An manner, and mischievous sense of humour. early instance of Orange in French’ (1954); ‘The As a practitioner of the translator’s art he was earliest biblical allusion to coined money?’ (1955); keen to share his skill and his interest with others. or ‘Jewish evidence for the history of the crossbow’ In 1971 he founded a workshop for translators (1985). from Hebrew, over which he presided, by turns There are many, many more writings I could patriarchal, solemn, didactic and amusing, twice a mention, including contributions to the history of year for 35 years. He was very pleased to win the Hebrew scholarship, memorial tributes, and Seatonian Prize at Cambridge University, offered prolegomena to works that were reissued, notably annually for a poem ‘conducive to the honour of Montefiore & Loewe, A Rabbinic anthology (1974). the Supreme Being and the recommendation of Raphael was very much of his generation. He virtue’, for a sonnet-cycle, ‘Like an Evening Gone’. was marked by his classical education: he wrote His publications, over a period of more than sixty that from an early age he was almost years, cover an extraordinary range of subjects, unconsciously ‘applying the methodology of my from the Bible and the culture of the ancient Classical studies to Hebrew texts: primarily, I rabbis, through medieval Hebrew language and suppose, because I felt that it was a challenge literature, to contemporary Jewish thought and the inherent in my Jewish heritage’ (Poems, 3). That history of scholarship. It was really only after he makes sense to me, but I imagine it is retired that he began to publish books, beginning incomprehensible to many younger scholars. I with The Rylands Haggadah (1988), a lavish suspect he felt an affinity with an even earlier facsimile edition which includes verse translations generation. He generally dressed in a suit. His BAJS Bulletin 2012 · 2 prose style was somewhat prolix but extremely Raphael Loewe Memorial Lecture precise. He favoured long, complicated sentences (I can’t see him tweeting). He was deeply Annual BAJS lecture given in honour of Raphael conscious of his debt to the past scholars, but also Loewe during the 2011 BAJS conference on Jewish of an obligation to future generations. Typically, he Languages in Oxford by Ben Outhwaite carefully catalogued his substantial collection of offprints and pamphlets, which included earlier collections made by his father and his great- grandfather, and presented them to the library here at Yarnton. His books he donated to his old Cambridge college, St John’s, where he was delighted to be made an honorary Fellow in 2009. I should like to end by saying how much I owe him personally. He was much more than a teacher. He took a very personal interest in my education and my academic career. He was genuinely pleased, I think, when I was appointed to the post in Cambridge which his father had held. He was generous with his advice, and occasionally criticism. He involved me in his schemes, such as the Translation workshop or, in a different field, a survey of Jewish cemeteries. Every September it was a pleasure to receive his New Year’s greetings, in the form of a Hebrew or English poem with its translation, and an appropriate Hebrew greeting. In recent years the messages became more and ‘Clothed in Glory and Decked in more gloomy about the state of the world. Splendour’: Medieval Hebrew since Raphael was devoted to his family, to his friends, the discovery of the Cairo Genizah1 to his educational institutions, and to the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, of which he was a That the late-nineteenth-century discovery of prominent and very committed member.