David Levi, Anglo-Jewish Theologian
David Levi, (1742-1801), a self-taught English Jew, provided both Jews and Christians with basic materials about Judaism in English. Since the English Jewish community of the time knew little or no Hebrew, Levi translated the Sephardi and Ashkenazi prayer books, and produced expositions and translat...
| Published in: | The Jewish quarterly review |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
1996
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | David Levi, (1742-1801), a self-taught English Jew, provided both Jews and Christians with basic materials about Judaism in English. Since the English Jewish community of the time knew little or no Hebrew, Levi translated the Sephardi and Ashkenazi prayer books, and produced expositions and translations of much Jewish lore about ritual and practice. His texts were used by Jewish and Christian writers well into the 19th century. In addition to supplying basic information about Judaism to Jews and Christians in England, Levi defended Judaism against deists--the followers of Spinoza, Voltaire, Hume, Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine--who had appeared in both the Jewish community and in the general English society. Levi responded to the attempts by Joseph Priestly and others to convert the Jews. He also offered a refutation to Thomas Paine's attack on biblical religion in the Age of Reason. Levi wrote a lengthy work, "Dissertations on the Prophecies," to counter Christian millenarian interpretations of biblical prophecies, especially concerning the punishment and redemption of the Jews. In a world in which the Christian millenarian interpreters saw the events of the American and French revolutions and Napoleon's Egyptian campaign as signs of the approaching climax of human history, Levi tried to be most cautious in evaluating the biblical prophecies in terms of the news of the day. Levi seems to have moved easily in both the Jewish world of London of the time, and also Christian society. He was regarded as the most authoritative spokesperson for Judaism in the English-speaking world. Christian writers on Judaism such as Hannah Adams in America and the abbé Henri Grégoire in France relied on his works for information about Jewish religion and practices. His efforts were superceded in subsequent generations by Jewish scholars who were trained in European centers of Jewish learning. However, his expository and polemical work gives a most interesting insight into the English Jewish world in the late 18th century. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1455218 |