Cecil Roth

Cecil Roth (5 March 1899 – 21 June 1970), was a British Jewish historian.

He was educated at Merton College, Oxford (Ph.D., 1924) and later returned to Oxford as Reader in Post-Biblical Jewish Studies from 1939 to 1964. Thereafter he was visiting professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel (1964–1965), and at the City University of New York (1966–1969).

Roth was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1925 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1941.

In 1928 he married Irene Rosalind Davis. He died, aged 71, on 21 June 1970 in Jerusalem.

Works

He was editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Judaica from 1965 until his death.

His works number over 600 items, including:

• Life of Menasseh Ben Israel (Philadelphia, 1934)
• Roth Haggadah (1934)
• Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica: a Bibliographical Guide to Anglo-Jewish History (London, 1937)
• The Spanish Inquisition (Robert Hale Limited 1937)
• Anglo-Jewish Letters, 1158-1917 (London, 1938)
• History of the Great Synagogue (of London), available online, as part of the at the Susser Archive of JCR-UK
• The Jewish Contribution to Civilization (New York 1941)
• History of the Jews in England (Oxford, 1941)
• History of the Jews in Italy (Philadelphia, 1946)
• The Rise of Provincial Jewry (Oxford, 1950), available online, as part of the Susser Archive of JCR-UK
• History of the Jews (initially published as A Bird's-Eye View of Jewish History) (1954)
• The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959)
• Jewish Art (1961)
• The Dead Sea Scrolls (1965)