Leon Roth

Following a brilliant academic career in England, Leon Roth (1896–1963) became, at the age of 32, the first professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1944, at the age of 44, he became its youngest rector. Like Maimonides an Spinoza—both of whom he admired and wrote about—Roth was concerned with the relationships between the Jewish religion and contemporary philosophical ideas. He was a practical philosopher, and was particularly interested in the application of Jewish ethical principles to the problems of his time.

Roth's ideal of Judaism as a way of life came into sharp conflict with developments in Palestine after the establishment of the State of Israel. He was particularly troubled by the wanton killing of civilians and by the treatment of refugees following the fighting in 1947–8. In 1953 he resigned his Chair and returned to England. In the remaining ten years of his life he travelled and lectured widely, and wrote most of the essays included in this volume. He died suddenly at the conclusion of a tour of New Zealand, just after his sixty-seventh birthday.