Gollancz, Sir Hermann
GOLLANCZ, SIR HERMANN
GOLLANCZ, SIR HERMANN (1852–1930), rabbi and teacher. Gollancz was born in Bremen and was the brother of Sir Israel *Gollancz. He officiated at the Bayswater Synagogue (1892–1923) and taught Hebrew at University College, London (1902–24). In 1897, when he received the rabbinic diploma on the Continent from three Galician rabbis, he became the center of a controversy over whether the rabbinic title should be a recognized qualification for the Anglo-Jewish clergy with the ultimate result that the title was so recognized. Gollancz published a number of critical editions and translations from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac, including a Hebrew and English edition of Sefer Mafte'aḥ Shelomo (1914) and also of Joseph Kimḥi's Shekel ha-Kodesh (1919). Hermann was the first English rabbi to receive a knighthood (1923).
bibliography:
Loewe, in: dnb (1922–1930), 350–1; H. Gollancz, Personalia (includes bibliography); P.H. Emden, Jews of Britain (1943), 123–5.
[Cecil Roth]