“A Native of Poland Professing the Arts in London”: The Unconventional Jewish Life and Thought of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838)

Abstract

Abstract This essay offers a new reconstruction of the fascinating life and works of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838), a Jewish engraver and biblical scholar who emigrated from Belarus via Copenhagen and Berlin to London. While Bennett’s intellectual path might appear similar to several other notable Polish Jewish immigrants to Western Europe, he is quite distinctive for his remarkable coadunation of art and thought, for his unusual focus on biblical studies, for opening social and intellectual connections with some of the most famous and accomplished Christian intellectuals of London, and for his self-determination and drive to complete his life-long ambition of serving Western civilization by rewriting and correcting the entire standard edition of the English Old Testament, a task of translation, he fervently believed, that could only be fulfilled by a learned Jewish Hebraist like himself.