Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment

This paper concerns the significance, in terms of the place of Anglo-Jewry in the culture of the time, of two Hebrew grammar books, one by Richard Grey1 and the other by Haim Vita Bolaffey,2 found together in the library of the architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837) in his Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.

The labyrinthine architectural background of the Museum is a fit setting for a subject that focuses on the working of the Enlightenment as it stimu? lated Anglo-Jewish culture in Hanoverian and Regency London. Soane, the son of a brick-maker grown to the height of fame as a professional architect, was an ‘incomer’ to a similar extent to those Jewish acquaintances he encountered through the broadening of intellect and cultural opportunity over the period 1753 to 1858. The books in Soane’s library are a mute testa? ment to the more public workings of the acculturation of the

Written by

Stephen Massil

Published in

Volume 41

2007

Other articles within the volume

• In memoriam: Lionel Kochan, 1922-2005
• Kindertransport: Tylers Green Hostel for young Jewish refugees
• Mac Goldsmith
• Addendum III: Lieutenant Marcus Bloom: a Jewish hero of the SOE
• Addendum II: More than just a few: Jewish pilots and aircrew in the Battle of Britain
• Addendum I
• Captain Isidore Newman, SOE
• A Jewish contribution to British psychiatry: Edward Mapother, Aubrey Lewis and their Jewish and refugee colleagues at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, 1933-66
• Hagedud Ha-Sini: The Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, 1932—42
• Jewish missionary activity in Portugal between the Wars
• Izak Goller (1891—1939): Zionist poet, playwright and preacher
• Two Hebrew grammars and the Enlightenment
• England expects…: British Jews under the white ensign from HMS Victory to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941
• John Braham — from meshorrer to tenor
• An eighteenth-century Sephardi lady: her relations and her property
• The Mahamad as an Arbitration Court
• The Domus Conversorum: the personal interest of Henry III
• Preface