Who was Solomon Schechter?
Solomon Schechter was born in Focsani, Romania in 1847. Early on he became devoted to Torah and Hebrew studies and was educated in Vienna and the University of Berlin. In 1882, he was invited to London to serve as a rabbinic tutor. In 1890, he was made lecturer in Talmud at Cambridge University, and in 1899 was appointed professor of Hebrew at University College in London.
In 1897, on behalf of Cambridge University, he traveled to Cairo where he made an astounding discovery that brought him international fame – the Cairo Genizah. A genizah literally means a hiding place. In ancient synagogues, sacred manuscripts that became unusable through damage or old age would be stored in a geniza until they were buried as was the Jewish custom for anything containing the name of G-d on it. The Cairo Genizah was a collection of more than 100,000 manuscripts and fragments that were centuries old, some dating back to the early Middle Ages. Among the fragments was a portion of the Hebrew text that Schechter identified as part of the missing original Ecclesiasticus that had previously known only in its Greek translation. The Genizah collection is now divided between the libraries of the University of Cambridge and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
In 1902 he was invited to New York to head the Jewish Theological Seminary where he served as president until his death in 1915. At the time, JTS was in a state of transition. Solomon Schechter is credited with building the seminary into a respected center of Jewish learning and a spiritual home of the Conservative movement. He was also the founder of the United Synagogue of America, the association of Conservative congregations.
As a renowned rabbinic scholar and essayist on Jewish subjects, Schechter published his critical edition of Avot According to Rabbi Nathan (1887),Studies in Judaism (1896; 2d series 1908; 3d series 1924) and Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (1909).
Solomon Schechter would no doubt be thrilled to know that today there are 73 schools bearing his name, which provide a stellar Jewish education for so many Jewish children in North America.