Moses Gaster (17 September 1856 – 5 March 1939) was a Romanian, later British
scholar, the ''
Hakham
''Hakham'' (or ''Chakam(i), Haham(i), Hacham(i), Hach''; ) is a term in Judaism meaning a wise or skillful man; it often refers to someone who is a great Torah scholar. It can also refer to any cultured and learned person: "He who says a wise th ...
'' of the
Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation, London, and a
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and
Romanian linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
. Moses Gaster was an active
Zionist in Romania as well as in England, where in 1899 he helped establish the
English Zionist Federation.
Biography
Life in Romania
Gaster was born in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
into a renowned Jewish Austrian family which had settled in
Wallachia at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the eldest son of
Chevalier Abraham Emanuel Gaster, who was the consul of the Netherlands in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
and the grandson of Asriel Gaster, a prosperous merchant and community leader. His mother, Pnina Judith Rubinstein, came from a rabbinical dynasty which included Rabbi Levi Isaac ben Meir.
After having taken a degree in his native city (1874), he proceeded to
Leipzig, where he received the degree of PhD in 1878 and then to the
Jewish Seminary in
Breslau, where he gained the ''Hattarat Hora'ah'' (rabbinical diploma) in 1881. His history of
Romanian popular literature was published in Bucharest in 1883.
He was lecturer on the
Romanian language
Romanian (obsolete spelling: Roumanian; , or , ) is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance languages, Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved fr ...
and literature at the
University of Bucharest (1881–85), inspector-general of schools, and a member of the council for examining teachers in Romania. He also lectured on the Romanian
apocrypha, the whole of which he had discovered in manuscript.
Gaster was a central figure of
Hibbat Zion in Romania and played a central role in the 1882 establishment by Jews from
Moinești of the Samarin (Zamarin) settlement, known since 1884 as
Zichron Ya'akov.
Life in England
Having been expelled from Romania by the
Ion Brătianu government in 1885 for allegedly "being a member of an
irredentist society", he went to England, where he held a lectureship, 1886 and 1891, in
Slavonic literature at the
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
, his lectures being later published as ''Greco-Slavonic Literature'', London, 1886.
A few years after, the Romanian government cancelled the decree of expulsion, presented him with the Romanian ''
Ordinul Naţional "Pentru Merit"'' of the first class (1891), and invited him to return; however, he declined the invitation, and in 1893 became a naturalised British citizen. In 1895, at the request of the Romanian government, he wrote a report on the British system of education, which was printed as a "green book" and accepted as a basis of
education in Romania.
In 1887 Gaster was appointed ''hakham'' of the
Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London, in which capacity he presided over the bicentenary of
Bevis Marks Synagogue. He was invited to give the
Ilchester Lectures at Oxford which were published in 1887 as ''Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic literature'' . Appointed as
principal of
Judith Lady Montefiore College,
Ramsgate
Ramsgate is a seaside resort, seaside town and civil parish in the district of Thanet District, Thanet in eastern Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2021 it had a population of 42,027. Ramsgate' ...
, from 1891 to 1896, he wrote valuable collection of essays accompanying the yearly reports of that institution. He was a member of the councils of the Folklore, Biblical, Archaeological, and
Royal Asiatic societies, writing many papers in their interest. He was the only ordained rabbi ever to become president of
The Folklore Society, in 1907–1908.
In 1925, Gaster was appointed one of the six members of the honorary board of trustees (Curatorium) of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (
YIVO
YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...
) in
Vilnius
Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
alongside
Simon Dubnow,
Albert Einstein,
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
,
Edward Sapir and
Chaim Zhitlowsky
Chaim Zhitlowsky (Yiddish: חײם זשיטלאָװסקי; ) (April 19, 1865 – May 6, 1943) was a Jewish Socialism, socialist, philosopher, social and political thinker, writer and literary critic born in Ushachy Raion, Ushachy, Vitebsk Governora ...
.
Visiting the Holy Land &
Zionism
Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
Gaster made a special study of the
Samaritans
Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...
and became a recognised authority on their language and literature. He visited
Nablus in the Ottoman Beirut Vilayet, the headquarters of the Samaritan community, and induced them to part with manuscripts covering the whole range of their literature. Where he could not secure the originals he had copies made for him by Samaritan priests. Gaster was among the most active leaders of the
Zionist movement in England, and even while in Romania he assisted in establishing the first Jewish colony in Palestine,
Zichron Ya'akov.
Rising in worldwide Jewish affairs he became vice-president of the
First Zionist Congress in
Basel
Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...
, and was a prominent figure in each succeeding congress. Gaster's residence, "Mizpah" 193
Maida Vale in London served as the venue for early talks between prominent Zionists and the Foreign Office in 1917. The first draft of the
Balfour Declaration was written at the Gaster home on 7 February 1917 in the presence of
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( ; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born Israeli statesman, biochemist, and Zionist leader who served as president of the World Zionist Organization, Zionist Organization and later as the first pre ...
,
Nahum Sokolow,
Baron Rothschild,
Sir Mark Sykes and
Herbert Samuel. Other visitors to the Gaster home included
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...
,
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
, and
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
.
Collector of manuscripts
He was a great collector of manuscripts, having over two thousand, mainly Hebrew, Samaritan and Slavonic. At the outbreak of the second World War his collection was moved for safekeeping to cellars in the centre of London. However, water used to quench London fires saturated a large part of the collection, which made some of the items illegible in whole or in part. Fortunately many of them had previously been transliterated into Hebrew typescript.
The collection comprised over 10,000 fragments in Hebrew and
Judaeo-Arabic from the
Cairo Geniza (the
genizah of the
Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old
Cairo
Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
); some 350 Hebrew codices and scrolls including prayer-books of many Jewish communities,
apocryphal writings, commentaries, treatises, letters,
marriage contracts,
piyyutim, and thirteen scrolls of the Law; some 350 Samaritan manuscripts, among them manuscripts of the
Pentateuch, commentaries and treatises, and
liturgical, historical, chronological and astronomical codices, detailed census lists of the Samaritans and lists of manuscripts in their possession; and almost 1,500 uncatalogued
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
fragments on paper from the Synagogue of Ben Ezra.
In 1954 the collection was purchased by the
John Rylands Library (since 1972 part of the University of Manchester), where it remains. The Rylands Cairo Genizah Project has been in progress for a number of years on the identification of fragments and digitisation of images of the texts.
The 'Gaster Collection,' a number of mainly
Karaite and
Yemenite manuscripts were purchased from the library of Dr. Moses Gaster in 1927, and are currently housed at the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
. An important early Hebrew codex called the
First Gaster Bible was also acquired by the British Library from his collection.
Private life
Moses Gaster was the father of
Jack and
Theodor Gaster and the grandfather of
Marghanita Laski. He was also son-in-law to
Michael Friedländer and father-in-law to
Neville Laski.
Literary works
Gaster's major work, in which he invested ten years of his life, was a Romanian
chrestomathy and
glossary
A glossary (from , ''glossa''; language, speech, wording), also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of Term (language), terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a gloss ...
covering the period from the dawn of Romanian literature down to 1830. Gaster also wrote various text-books for the
Jewish community of Romania, made a Romanian translation of the ''
Siddur'', and compiled a short
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
. '' folklore
Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
and did not sympathize with those believing that preserving folklore should mostly serve a political nationalist purpose.
His study of Romanian folklore led Gaster to conclusions at odds with those shared by most scholars of his time, who found there traces of pre-Christian beliefs. Gaster argued that nothing found in Romanian folklore pre-dated Christianity, and that what appeared as pre-Christian to other scholars in fact derived from a Christian heresy,
Bogomilism.
A list of major works follows:
* ''Literatura populară română'' (1883)
* ''
Jewish Folk-Lore in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
'' (1887);
* ''Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic literature'' (1887);
* ''Chrestomatie Română'' (2 volumes, 1891)
* ''
The Sword of Moses'' from an ancient manuscript book of
magic, with introduction, translation, and index (1896);
* ''The
Chronicles of Jerahmeel'' (1899
copy at Google Books
* ''Hebrew Illuminated Bibles of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries and a Samaritan Scroll of the Pentateuch'' (1901);
* ''History of the
Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews'', a memorial volume in celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of its inauguration (1901).
* edited ''The Book of Prayer and Order of Service according to the custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews'' (6 volumes, 1901–1907);
* The Hebrew Version of the ''
Secretum Secretorum'' (1907–1908);
* ''Das Buch Josua'' (1908), on the
Samaritan Book of Joshua;
* ''Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories'' (1915);
* ''Children's Stories from Roumanian Legends and Fairy Tales''
923
* ''The Exempla of the Rabbis'' (1924);
* ''Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology'', 3 Vols. (1925–28)
* ''The Samaritans: Their History, Doctrines and Literature.'' (The
Schweich Lectures for 1923) (1925);
* ''
The Asatir: The Samaritan Book of the “Secrets of Moses”'' (1927);
* ''The Story of Chanucah'' (1928);
* ''The Titled Bible: a Model Codex of the Pentateuch Reproduced in Facsimile from MS. No. 85 of the Gaster Collection'' (1929);
* ''Die 613 Gebote und Verbote der Samaritaner, in "Festschrift zum Bestehen des jüd.-theol. Seminars Breslau"'', (1929);
* ''The Story of Passover'' (1929);
* ''The Story of Purim'' (1929);
* ''The Story of Shavuoth'' (1930);
* ''The Story of the High Festivals and the Feast of Tabernacles'' (1931);
* ''Conjurations and the Ancient Mysteries'' (1932);
* ''Samaritan Oral Law and Ancient Traditions, Vol. I, Eschatology'' (1932);
* ''Ma'aseh Book: Book of Jewish Tales and Legends Translated from the Judeo-German'' (in two volumes); Philadelphia,
The Jewish Publication Society of America (1934).
Contributions to periodical literature:
* "Beiträge zur Vergleichenden Sagen und Märchenkunde", in ''Monatsschrift'', xxix. 35 et seq.;
* "Ein Targum der Amidah," in ib. xxxix. 79 et seq.;
* "The Legend of the Grail." ''Folk-Lore''. Vol. 2. 1891
* "The Apocalypse of Abraham from the Roman Text", in the ''Transactions of the
Royal Asiatic Society'', ix. 195;
* "The Unknown Hebrew Versions of the
Tobit Legend," in ib. 1897, p. 27;
* "The Oldest Version of Midrash Meghillah", in ''Kohut Memorial Volume'';
* "Hebrew Text of One of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs", in the ''Proceedings of the
Society of Biblical Archæology'', xvi. 33 et seq.;
* "Contributions to the History of Aḥiḳar and Nadam", in the ''Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society'', 1900, p. 301.
Biographies of Gaster
* Elisabeta Mănescu, ''Dr. M. Gaster, viaţa şi opera sa'', 1940, Editura Rotativa, Bucharest
* Moses Gaster, ''Memorii, corespondenţă'', 1998, Editura Hasefer, Bucharest,
References
;Bibliography
*
*
*
Moses Gaster – 15th edition, article Gaster, Moses
*
External links
Moses Gaster Projects at University of ManchesterThe Rylands Genizah CollectionGaster papers at University College LondonAIM25: UCL, Gaster PapersReviews on Taylor Francis Online*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaster, Moses
1856 births
1939 deaths
Linguists from England
Sephardi rabbis
British Orthodox rabbis
Writers from Bucharest
Academics of the University of Oxford
Romanian emigrants to the United Kingdom
Honorary members of the Romanian Academy
Romanian folklorists
Romanian Sephardi Jews
Romanian Orthodox rabbis
Linguists from Romania
Romanian literary critics
English book and manuscript collectors
Romanian book and manuscript collectors
British Zionists
Romanian Zionists
Hovevei Zion
People deported from Romania
Presidents of the Folklore Society