ABRAHAMS

ABRAHAMS, family of English rabbis and scholars. ABRAHAM SUZMAN (c. 1801–1880) migrated from Poland to England in 1837, becoming principal shoḥet in London in 1839. He spent the end of his life in Palestine. He wrote an autobiography Zekhor le-Avraham (1860). His son BARNETT (1831–1863) was the dayyan of the Sephardi community in London (although himself an Ashkenazi) and was appointed principal of Jews' College in 1856. A graduate of ÇUniversity College, London, he was the first English rabbi to hold a British university degree. He died at the age of only 32 of acute rheumatism. Barnett's three sons, Joseph, Moses, and Israel, devoted their lives to serving the Jewish community. joseph (1855–1938) was rabbi in Melhourne, Australia, from 1883 to 1923 and rabbi emeritus from 1924 until his death. He helped found the United Jewish Education Board of Victoria and was its president (1896–1901). He wrote a number of monographs on Jewish subjects, the most important one being The Sources of Midrash Echah Rabba (Berlin, 1883). moses (1860–1919) was the minister of the Jewish community of Leeds. He was the author of Aquila's Greek Version of the Hebrew Bible (1919). israel abrahams was a noted scholar. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Abrahams, in: JHSET, 21 (1962–67), 243–60 (on Abraham). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online; H.L. Rubinstein, Australia I, index. (Cecil Roth)