The British Jewish scholar Israel Abrahams (1858-1925) wrote works on Jewish history, literature, and sociology. He aided immensely in the popularization of many areas of Jewish knowledge previously accessible only to scholars.

The son of a scholarly family, Israel Abrahams served both as student and teacher in Jews' College in London. He was reader in rabbinics and Talmudic literature at Cambridge as successor to Solomon Schechter, who came to the United States to head the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Abrahams's endeavors included founding of the Jewish Historical Society of London, editing (1888-1908) with Claude G. Montefiore the Jewish Quarterly Review, contributing to many encyclopedias, and lecturing in England and the United States. He enjoyed a felicity of style in the use of the English language, which made his writings very attractive to lay people who desired authoritative Jewish information.

One of Abrahams's major works is Jewish Life in the...