Israel Abrahams

Israel Abrahams was born in London to a family affiliated with the city’s well-established Sephardic community around the Spanish and Portuguese Bevis Marks synagogue. His father Barnett Abrahams, though originally from Poland, was chief judge of the Sephardic communities’ rabbinic court and a ḥakham in the synagogue—the first Jewish religious “minister” in Britain to hold a degree from a British university. After receiving his master’s degree from University College, London in 1881, Israel Abrahams began teaching at Jews’ College. He was an editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review (1888–1908), a frequent contributor to the Jewish Chronicle, and an active member of the Anglo-Jewish Association. In 1902 he took over Solomon Schechter’s rabbinic studies post at Cambridge University. Abrahams was a pioneer in British reform and liberal Judaism, one of the leading Jewish scholars in England, and a supporter of the establishment of a Jewish university in Jerusalem, despite his disapproval of Zionism.