Moses Gaster

Born in Bucharest, Romania, where his father was a religious community leader and economic attaché to the local Dutch consulate, Moses Gaster received ordination in 1881 from the Rabbinical Seminary in Breslau and earned a doctorate in philology from Leipzig University. Gaster then returned to Romania on an academic appointment and became involved in Jewish community affairs and early Zionist activity. In 1885, he was exiled from Romania for publicizing an article against antisemitism; he moved to England, where he became a lecturer at Oxford and, in 1887, ḥakham of the London Sephardic community. Gaster served on the executive committee of multiple Zionist congresses and was actively involved with negotiations that led to the Balfour Declaration. He was a prolific scholar of Romanian, Jewish, and Slavic folklore. His folkloristic scholarly work also covered Yemenite and Indian Jewish customs.