Maurice Samuel

Romanian-born Maurice Samuel spent his youth in Manchester, England. He moved to the United States in 1914 and spent most of the rest of his life there, except for a few years when he lived in Palestine during the British Mandate. He wrote and lectured prolifically, mainly on Jewish matters, and was one of the best-known exponents of Zionism in the United States and Britain before 1948. The most popular of his books was The World of Sholem Aleichem (1943), which was instrumental in bringing Yiddish literature to the attention of English-speaking readers. In his delightful memoir Little Did I Know (1963), he recalled his youth in the Jewish immigrant community of Manchester.