Hyman Hurwitz

Hyman Hurwitz was a native of Poznan, then known as Posen, in today’s Poland. He had a traditional Jewish education there before coming to England to join his father, who was a pious Talmudist.

To support himself, Hyman found work at a Christian-run school where he gave Hebrew lessons and religious instruction to Jewish boys. At the same time, he broadened his own education by studying the classics and science. His career path was set. In 1799 he opened a Jewish boys’ boarding school in Highgate, and several of his boys passed through who later achieved distinction in life.

In Highgate he met and formed a close friendship with the great poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Hurwitz himself wrote poetry, and the two collaborated on a public poem on the death of King George III. But Coleridge’s interests and talents went much wider, and he would surely be one of the best guides for anyone seeking to broaden their horizons.

It was Coleridge who recommended Hurwitz’s appointment as Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the newly-established University College. Not only would he have a high opinion of Hurwitz’s scholarship, he had been shocked by the anti-Semitism he had witnessed in Germany, and was angered by the discrimination and social isolation that many Jews encountered in England.

Jews (like Roman Catholics and nonconformist protestants) had always been barred by their non-Anglican faith from Oxford and Cambridge. Until University College was founded, they were the only universities in England. The universities of Dublin and Edinburgh had no such restrictions, and quite a number of Jews were admitted to them over the years. But the absence of any university that could admit them in England had been a persistent blemish. It is testament to the high standing in which Hurwitz was held that, on his appointment to UCL, he is thought to have been the first professing Jew anywhere to be appointed to a chair in Hebrew studies.

Hurwitz’s workplace at UCL would have been within comfortable walking distance of his home at 12 Amwell Street, Clerkenwell. His last years were spent in Highbury, at 26 Highbury Place, which would still have been in those days quite a bucolic location for his retirement.