Herbert J. M. Loewe (1882–1940)

Herbert J.M. (James Martin) Loewe was born to a prominent Anglo-Jewish family in London. His parents were Emma and James Henry Loewe, and his paternal grandfather was Louis Loewe, the confident and assistant to philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then studied at Cambridge University, where he read oriental studies and theology. After graduating in 1905, he went to the Middle East to improve his Arabic and teach at the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Cairo. In 1906, he returned to Cambridge and resumed his academic career there. Besides being a lecturer in Hebrew at the University, he taught Hebrew in Jewish schools, and to teachers at Training colleges. He was the curator of Oriental Literature at the University Library, Cambridge, As his health did not permit him to do military service in World War I, he was sent to Calcutta, India in 1917–1919 to manage a factory that produced British military uniforms. Before his departure, he married Ethel Victoria Hyamson, a younger sister of the historian Albert Montefiore Hyamson. Their sons Raphael and Michael both became noted academics and writers. On their return to England in 1920, he became lecturer in Semitic languages at Exeter College, Oxford University. In 1931 he taught rabbinics at Cambridge and was lecturer in Hebrew at the University of London. His published works included A Catalogue of the Aldis Wright mss. in Trinity College, Cambridge (1926); "Render unto Caesar" (1940); Mediaeval Hebrew Minstrelsy (1926); Some Mediaeval Hebrew Poesy (1927; and a volume of annotations to Abrahams' and Stokes' Starrs and Jewish Charters in the British Museum, 2 vols. (1930–32). With C.G. Montefiorer, the founder of Liberal Judaism in England, he edited A Rabbinic Anthology (1938, 1968), a widely-used source book.