Abrahams, Israel

Israel Abrahams, (born Nov. 26, 1858, London, Eng.—died Oct. 6, 1925, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire), one of the most distinguished Jewish scholars of his time, who wrote a number of enduring works on Judaism, particularly Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (1896).

In 1902, after teaching for several years at Jews’ College, London, Abrahams was appointed reader in Talmudics (rabbinic literature) at the University of Cambridge, a post he retained until his death. From 1888 to 1908 he was editor, jointly with the Anglo-Jewish scholar Claude G. Montefiore, of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Although of strict Orthodox upbringing, Abrahams was among the founders of the Liberal movement, an Anglo-Jewish group that stressed the universality of Jewish ethics, minimized ritual and custom, and originally eschewed Zionism.

In Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Abrahams concluded that there was no medieval period in Jewish history but that Christian medievalism had a lasting effect on the Jews, particularly in the sense of having deepened the process of Jewish isolation from the rest of society. Abrahams’ book covers every facet of Jewish life of the times, including the functions of the synagogue, social customs and community organization, occupations and amusements, and Jewish-Christian relationships. Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, 2 vol. (1917–24), includes a series of essays based on an examination of the New Testament treatment of Judaism. Among his works on Jewish writings is Chapters on Jewish Literature (1899), a survey of the period from the fall of Jerusalem in ad 70 to the death of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn in 1786.