A rabbi, scholar, and professor, Schechter is born in Romania. He studies Talmud and Jewish texts in Vienna, teaches at Cambridge University and University College in London. Most known for his discovery of thousands of pages of Jewish manuscripts in the Geniza in Cairo, Egypt, Schechter becomes president of the prestigious Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (1902-1915), where he founds the United Synagogue of America, today’s Conservative Jewish movement. For Schechter, Zionism meant “returning to Zion, not merely or mainly as a national revival, or reaction to anti-Semitism, but a fundamental part of Judaism as essential as Sabbath observance. For him Palestine needed to be a spiritual center for the Jewish people, a view closely held by Ahad Ha’am.” (Norman Bentwich, Biography of Solomon Schechter, 1938)
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