Nina Salaman

Born in Derby, United Kingdom, Nina Davis Salaman received instruction in Hebrew from her father, a Hebrew linguist and scholar. Her family moved to London when she was an infant, and she was brought up among the Kilburn Wanderers, a circle of Jewish intellectuals centered on the scholar Solomon Schechter. Salaman began her career as a Hebrew translator in 1894, when the Jewish Chronicle published her translation of the twelfth-century medieval Hebrew poet Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra’s “Song of Chess.” Zionist author Israel Zangwill, having become acquainted with Salaman through the Kilburn Wanderers, took note of Salaman’s skill and introduced her to influential community leader Judge Mayer Sulzberger at the Jewish Publication Society (JPS). In 1901, the JPS published Salaman’s collection of translations, Songs of Exile by Hebrew Poets, thereby cementing her status among the most prominent Anglophone Hebraists of her day. Also in 1901, she married Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, settling with him in the English countryside. Salaman, as well as her husband, was an active Jewish nationalist and involved with women’s suffrage efforts in the United Kingdom.