Raphael Loewe (1919–2011)

Raphael Loewe was born to an Anglo-Jewish family living in Calcutta, India. His parents were Ethel Victoria and Herbert Loewe, and he had one brother, Michael Loewe, who also became a noted academic. Herbert Loewe, a renowned scholar and editor, was not fit enough to fight in World War I, and was working in Calcutta as the manager of a factory producing British military uniforms. Raphael's great-grandfather Louis Loewe was a confidant and assistant to the humanitarian Sir Moses Montefiore. On the family's return to England, Raphael attended the Dragon School in Oxford, while his father taught at Oxford University. He moved to the Leys School when his father joined the faculty at Cambridge University. After completing his secondary education, he began working as a tutor. In 1938, he witnessed first hand the spread of Nazism and rising anti-Semitism in Europe. He became involved in preparing Jews to leave Germany and live abroad; his father also helped Jewish academics emigrate to England. Later that year, Raphael entered Cambridge University to read Classics, graduating in 1942. His academic excellence was recognized with a classical scholarship and the John Stewart Rannoch Scholarship for Hebrew Studies. During World War II, Raphael was made an officer with the Royal Armoured Corps. He served in North Africa and Italy and was badly injured in 1944, permanently affecting his right leg. He was awarded the Military Cross, for exemplary gallantry for rescuing the crew inside a burning tank, In 1944, he demonstrated his heroism further during the battle of Monte Cassino, repeatedly entering a minefield to rescue the wounded. After the war ended, his academic career began in earnest. He published his first article in 1947, while working as a researcher at Balliol College, Oxford. After this he went on to teach at Leeds University, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1952, he married Chloe Klatzkin, with whom he had two daughters. In 1961, he began teaching Hebrew at University College London (UCL), and also taught at Leo Baeck College, London. In 1963-1964, he was a visiting scholar at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. Back at UCL, he taught Biblical Hebrew, of which he was a master. From 1981 until his retirement in 1984, he held the position of Goldsmid Professor of Hebrew and was simultaneously Head of the Department. UCL has now established a Raphael Loewe Prize awarded to an undergraduate student annually and a Raphael Loewe memorial lecture. Shortly after his 90th birthday in 2009, Raphael was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater, St. John's College, Cambridge. Raphael Loewe spent more than 60 years researching, writing, and teaching about Jewish thought, art and literature, particularly medieval Hebrew literature and culture. He published widely, and wrote and translated many medieval and early modern works of poetry from Hebrew to English and Latin, but also English poetry into Hebrew. He was awarded the Tel Aviv Prize for Gilguley merubha‘im, his translation into Hebrew of Edward Fitzgerald's English version of Omar Khayyam's Persian poem, the Rubáyyát. In 2000, he won the prestigious Seatonian Prize from Cambridge for his long poem on a sacred subject, "Like an Evening Gone." He was active in Anglo-Jewish societies including the Jewish Historical Society of England, the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, the Society for Old Testament Study, the British Association for Jewish Studies, and the Cecil and Irene Roth Memorial Trust.
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