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Nina Ruth Davis Salaman (1877 - 1925) was a well-regarded Hebraist, known especially for her translations of medieval Hebrew poetry, at a time when Jewish scholarship in Europe was a male preserve. In addition to her translations, she published historical and critical essays, book reviews, and an anthology of Jewish readings for children, as well as poetry of her own. She born in Derby in England¿s industrial heartland, to Arthur and Louisa (Jonas) Davis. Her father¿s family were precision instrument makers (telescopes, opera glasses, miners¿ lamps) and had lived in England since the early nineteenth century. When she was six weeks old, the family moved to London, settling first in Kilburn and then later in Bayswater. Although not an observant Jew by birth (there were few Jews and no synagogue in Derby), Arthur Davis embraced Orthodoxy and, having mastered the Hebrew language, devoted his leisure to Jewish scholarship. In 1892, he published a study of the neginot (cantillation marks) in the Masoretic text of the Bible, and in the next decade, working with Herbert Adler (1876¿1940), a lawyer and nephew of Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler (1839¿1911), prepared what became the standard British edition and translation of the mahzor (festival prayer book). He transmitted his enthusiasm for Hebrew to his daughter Nina and, most unusually, gave her and her older sister, Elsie, an intensive Hebrew education, personally teaching them every day. While still in her teens, Nina began publishing translations of medieval Hebrew poetry in the Anglo-Jewish press. She also contributed to her father¿s edition of the mahzor. Israel Zangwill (1864¿1926), the best known Jewish writer in the English-speaking world at the time and, like her father, a member of the Kilburn Wanderers (the circle that formed around Solomon Schechter (1847¿1915) in the 1880s), encouraged her and provided her with an introduction to Judge Mayer Sulzberger (1843¿1923), a central figure in the Jewish Publication Society of America, which published her collection Songs of Exile by Hebrew Poets in 1901. On October 23, 1901, Nina married Redcliffe Nathan Salaman (1874¿1955), a physician whom she had met four months earlier at the New West End Synagogue. (It was, literally, love at first sight - they were engaged only ten days after setting eyes on each other.) After living in Berlin for several months, while Redcliffe completed advanced training in pathology, they returned to London, where he assumed the directorship of the Pathological Institute at the London Hospital. However, tuberculosis forced him to leave medicine, and after three months of recuperation in Switzerland, he and Nina settled in the country, in the village of Barley in Hertfordshire. Family money (ostrich feathers and London real estate) having relieved him of the need to earn a living, they lived comfortably with their six children (one of whom died in childhood) and numerous servants in a thirty-room country house. Nina Salaman continued to pursue her interest in medieval Hebrew poetry, while at the same time supervising her children¿s education, overseeing nannies, tutors, and servants, and, as the local squire¿s wife, entertaining the vicar, hosting garden parties, and helping the village poor. Despite Barley¿s distance from London, she maintained a kosher home (a matter of greater concern to her than to her husband) and Sabbath observance. For the festivals, the family traveled to London, where they stayed with one of Redcliffe¿s numerous siblings and worshiped at the New West End Synagogue. She took personal responsibility for the Hebrew education of her children until they left for boarding school, especially that of her eldest son Myer, who she hoped would become a rabbi. Barley¿s proximity to Cambridge brought Salaman into close contact with Israel Abrahams (1858¿1924), reader in rabbinics at the university since 1902 and, like Zangwill and her father, one of the Kilburn Wanderers . . . Seller Inventory # 008742
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