Moses Gaster

Scholar, rabbi, militant for the rights of the Jews, Zionist.

He was born in Bucharest in September, 17th, 1856 in a well known Jewish family.  His grandfather was one of the community’s leaders and founder of a synagogue and his father was Holland’s consul in Bucharest. He made his gymnasium and high school in famous schools in Bucharest but he had private teachers for Hebrew and biblical studies. 

In 1876 he began his studies at the Jewish Theological Seminar in Breslau where he studied with H. Graetz and Z. Frankel. He also studied at the Breslau University paying a special attention to linguistics, biblical studies and oriental languages. In 1877 he obtains his Master of Arts degree at the University of Leipzig with a thesis on the historical phonetics of Romanian.

In 1878, at the initiative of Prof. Graetz, Gaster joins the Romanian Committee in Berlin which, after the Russian-Turk war, was trying to impose conditions on the recognition of the independence of Romania by the Jewish emancipation.  

Back to Romania, in 1880, Gaster starts to focus on the study of ancient literature and Romanian folklore literature, holds lectures of compared mythology at the University of Bucharest and cooperates with the most important cultural publications of that time.    He militates for the civil rights of the Romanian Jews in the spirit of the Berlin Treaty and he is also one of the founders of the local organization of Chovevei Tzion. In 1882 he is expelled from Romania, together with the most important opinion leaders of the Jewish press as a result of their exposure of the restrictive legislative measures and of the administrative abuses.

He settles down to London.  He holds the Ilchester conference cycle on Slavonic literature at Oxford. In 1887 he is appointed rabbi (Haham) of the Sephardic Community. He is the director of the Montefiore College in Ramsgate which he tries to transform after the model of the Breslau Seminar.
He has important academic positions as president of Folklore-Lore Society, president of Jewish Historical Society, vice-president of Royal Asiatic Society and member of many scholar societies.  Gaster was an active member of Choveve Tzion and of Anglo-Jewish Association. He adheres at the Zionist movement from its beginning and he was vice-president of the second, the third, the forth and the seventh Zionist Congress. The British Zionist movement owes him a lot. He also was founder and Chairman of English Zionist Federation.

Follower of cultural Zionism and not allowing any territorial compromise, Gaster devoted himself to the negotiations with the British authorities regarding the future of the Jewish community in Palestine. The first draft of the Balfour Declaration will be written at his London residence on the 7th of February, 1917, with H. Weizman, N. Sokolov, James de Rothschild, Mark Sykes and Herbert Samuel. Gaster made his first appearance with Romanian language studies but when he came back from Breslau, his interest headed for Romanian folklore literature. He has the credit to be the author of the first attempt to systemize the Romanian folklore literature in the volume “Romanian folklore literature”, Bucharest, 1883.  „Chrestomaţia română”, Leipzig, Bucharest, 1892, was considered for many years to be a reference work in the field and promoted the Romanian literature and language within the European specialized milieux. The same can be said about his lectures at Oxford and his studies published in specialized magazines. 

Follower of the corporatist method for the study of folklore, Gaster considered the Slavic –Byzantine folklore literature as the bridge between the folklore literature fore and post Talmudic and the European folklore.   

His studies of biblical exegesis and Jewish folklore literature from late antiquity and Middle Ages as well as his articles dedicated to multiple fields of Judaic Science – for which he was the promoter in Romania and his Samaritean studies were collected in three volumes of    „Studies and Texts in Folklore-Lore, Magic, Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology”, London, Maggs Bros, 1925-1928.

Gaster co-operated with prestigious scholar publications such as „The Archaeological Review”, „Asiatic Quarterly Review”, „Byzantinische Zeitschrift”, „Folklore-Lore”, „Journal of Apocrypha”, „Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society”, “Slavonic Review”, Zeitschrift für alttestamentische Wissenschaft”. He wrote in romanian cultural magazines such as „Bukarester Salon”, “Revista pentru istorie, arheologie şi filologie”, „Revista literară”, „Şezătoarea” and had important contributions in publications dedicated to the Judaic Science such as „Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums”, “Revue des Etudes Juives”, “Hebrew Union College Annual”, “Anuar pentru Israelţi”, “Sinai”. Articles written by Gater were published in Jewish publications such as “The Jewish Chronicle”, “The Jewish Forum”, “The Jewish World”, “Jewish Quarterly Review”, “and Ost und West”, “Jewish Tribune”.

Bibliographical sources:

  1. Mănescu, Elisabetha: Dr. M. Gaster – viaţa şi opera sa; Bucureşti, 1940.
  2. Gaster, Moses: Memorii, corespondenţă, ediţie îngrijită de Victor Eskenasy; Bucureşti, Hasefer, 1998.
  3. Gaster Moses: Judaica & Hungarica, ed. Miskolczy Ambrus; Budapest, Eötvös Lorand University, 1993.
  4. Occident and Orient – Gaster Anniversary Volume, ed. by B. Schindler, London, Taylor’s Foreign Press, 1936.
  5. Stanciu, Măriuca: A promoter of the Haskala in Romania – Moses Gaster in Studia Hebraica, I, Bucureşti, 2001.