Victor Abraham Keats FRHS is a British chess historian and fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has written a number of books on the history of chess with particular reference to the contributions of Jews to the game.
Keats trained as a quantity surveyor and later became the curator of a chess collection which he expanded. [1] He received his M.Phil. from University College, London in 1994 for a dissertation on the subject of "Chess in Jewish History and Hebrew Literature" [2] which was published in book form by Magnes Press of Jerusalem in 1995.
In the same year his three volume history of chess was published by Oxford Academia which developed his ideas of the contributions made by Jews to the history of the game in more detail including the first translation into English of Thomas Hyde's De Ludis Orientalibus (1694). The usefulness of the assembled source material and translations was acknowledged by Irving Finkel in Times Higher Education who, however, was troubled by the author's scholarly standards which he described as containing a troubling "liberal carelessness". [3] George Steiner, writing in The Observer, was more complimentary, describing Keats' soul as "blessed with chess mania" but acknowledging that the "layout, typography and structure [of the books] are as labyrinthine, as baroque and beyond mere reason as is chess itself" and summarising by saying that the three volumes represent a "mad feast of learning". [4]
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Jewish translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon. In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.
The Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews.
Herbert Danby was an Anglican priest and writer who played a central role in the change of attitudes toward Judaism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto, was an Italian historian, a rabbi, and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic literature, in the University of Florence, then at the University of Rome La Sapienza. When the 1938 anti-Semitic Italian racial laws forced him from this position, he moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Gershom Scholem, was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Avraham Gabriel Yehoshua was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner". Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.
Menachem Elon was an Israeli jurist and Professor of Law specializing in Mishpat Ivri, an Orthodox rabbi, and a prolific author on traditional Jewish law (Halakha). He was the head of the Jewish Law Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Jews of Kurdistan are the Mizrahi Jewish communities from the geographic region of Kurdistan, roughly covering parts of northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. Kurdish Jews lived as closed ethnic communities until they were expelled from Arab and Muslim states from the 1940s–1950s onward. The community largely speaks Judeo-Aramaic and Kurdish languages, with the Kurmanji dialect of Iraqi Kurdistan being the most prevalent. As Kurdish Jews natively adhere to Judaism and originate from the Middle East, Mizrahi Hebrew is used for liturgy. Many Kurdish Jews, especially the ones who hail from Iraq, went through a Sephardic Jewish blending during the 18th century.
Emanuel Tov, is a Dutch–Israeli biblical scholar and linguist, emeritus J. L. Magnes Professor of Bible Studies in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been intimately involved with the Dead Sea Scrolls for many decades, and from 1991, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project.
Martin David Goodman, FBA is a British historian and academic, specialising in Roman history and the history and literature of the Jews in the Roman period.
David Flusser was an Israeli professor of Early Christianity and Judaism of the Second Temple Period at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Tudor Parfitt is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, traveller and adventurer. He specialises in the study of Jewish communities around the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Some of these communities have been recognised only since the late 20th century as having ancient Jewish origins.
Sasson Somekh was an Israeli academic, writer and translator. He was professor emeritus of Modern Arab Literature at Tel Aviv University.
Ruth Kark is an Israeli historical geographer and professor of geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Kark is a well-known researcher and expert in the field of the historical geography of Palestine and Israel.
Israel Bartal, is Avraham Harman Professor of Jewish History, member of Israel Academy of Sciences (2016), and the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Hebrew University (2006–2010). Since 2006 he is the chair of the Historical Society of Israel. He served as director of the Center for Research on the History and Culture of Polish Jewry, and the academic chairman of the Project of Jewish Studies in Russian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Bartal was the co-director of the Center for Jewish Studies and Civilization at Moscow State University. Bartal received his PhD from Hebrew University in 1981. He focuses his research on the history of the Jews in Palestine, the Jews of Eastern Europe, the Haskalah Movement, Jewish Orthodoxy and modern Jewish historiography.
David Monson Bunis is a professor in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Languages, Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and heads its program in Judezmo studies. He is also an advisor to the Israel Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino and a member of the Akademia del Ladino en Israel. He is the editor of Languages and Literatures of Sephardic and Oriental Jews, co-editor of Massorot, a Hebrew-language journal devoted to the study of Jewish language traditions, and author of books and articles on the Judezmo language and its literature.
Edward Alexander was an American essayist and professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington. He focused his research on literary figures such as John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, John Morley, John Ruskin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, and Robert B. Heilman; and authored books about Jewish history, Zionism, and antisemitism.
Moshe Yegar is an Israeli retired diplomat and historian of Islam in Southeast Asia; also, he is author of books and research articles on the history of Zionism during the British Mandate, and about Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its policies and activities.