Elijah Levita was born in 1469 in Neustadt, near Nuremberg, he came from an observant Jewish family during the Renaissance period, where Europe was beginning to emerge out from the Middle ages through the period of the Enlightenment into the modern era. From Levita’s early childhood he excelled in the study of biblical texts and Hebrew Grammar. He settled in Venice but in 1504 he was earning a living teaching Hebrew to children in Padua, northern Italy. He enjoyed a prosperous life there, as a Grammarian translating Hebrew texts into other languages until he was forced to flee to Rome, losing all his possessions when the army of the League of Cambrai took the city in 1509.
The liberal minded Ægidius of Viterbo, general of the Augustine Order was a student of Hebrew and offered Levita and his family refuge in the palace of the Cardinal where he lived for 13 years, in exchange for teaching Hebrew lessons. At the same time he took up studying Greek. So far this guy has done pretty well as a Hebrew teacher, a lot better than many of our Cheder or Ulpan teachers today.
Imperialists invaded Rome and once again Elijah lost all of his property and fled to Venice, where he met a printer of Hebrew language books named Daniel Bomberg who he worked with continuing his publications and teaching. At the age of seventy, Bomberg stopped publishing; Levita left his family in 1537 and moved to the town of Isney in Germany.
It was here where he met Paul Fagius (1504- 1549) a renaissance scholar of Biblical Hebrew born in Rheinzabern, South-east Germany, he learned Hebrew from Levita as a Priest and established a Hebrew press. He translated into Latin from Hebrew works including Pirḳe Avot (1541), Levita’s “Tishbi” (1541) and Shemot Devarim, an Old Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German dictionary, in 1542.
Levita furthered the study of Hebrew in the Christian world, during a period of hostility towards Jews. Elijah is the author of what is believed to be the first ever-Yiddish novel, ‘the Bove-bukh’ (The Book of Bove) written in 1507 and printed in 1541.
His works were popular with both Jews and Christians and demonstrated the possibility of peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial interaction between Jews and Christians.
There were objections by Jews to his teaching Christians Hebrew and Jewish texts, as they alleged that they were only studying Hebrew and Jewish sources in the attempt to try to disprove them, to which Levita responded that the Christian Hebraist’s he was teaching were moderates who defended Jews from attacks from a fanatical clergy.
He was described by the nineteenth century writer, Christian David Ginsberg as “… the great teacher of cardinals and bishops of the Romish Church, and of the originators and leaders of the reformation, and who may justly be regarded as the reviver of Hebrew learning among Christians at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and as one of the most distinguished promoters of Biblical literature.”
Due to a rise in the Counter-reformation movement, many rejected Fagius’s work and he was put under pressure so he moved to England where he was given the position of Hebrew lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1549. In 1959 he died from plague and was buried in St Margaret’s Church, Cambridge. After Queen Mary’s Catholic restoration, his bones were exhumed and burnt; Levita’s book Tishbi, was no longer permitted to be distributed in Britain at the time, due to the books preface written by Fagius. So it was reprinted in Basle without the preface to conceal his connection to the book. A memorial was set up in his memory in 1560.
Elijah Levita died on 28 January 1549 at the age of 80 and was buried in the Lido Jewish cemetery, Venice.
Mr. Cameron’s great-great-grandfather was a descendent of Elijah Levita. Emile Levita, was a German-born merchant and banker of Polish Jewish parentage who immigrated to Manchester from Germany in the 1850s, entered the world of commerce, as a Banker for the Rothschild family, gained citizenship in 1871 and became director of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, based in London.
He married out to British born, Catherine Plumridge Rée, who was the daughter of Hermann Philipp Rée (who was a Dutch, Jewish Business man from a German background). And assimilated into British society looking to be accepted as an English gentleman, owning a grouse moor in Wales, hunting and sending his four sons to Eton. Cameron descends from Emile’s eldest son Arthur Levita (great-grandfather) who married Steffie Cooper, a cousin of the Royal Family. Their daughter, Enid would later marry Ewen Donald Cameron in 1930. It is here that the Levita’s merged with Cameron’s in 1930.
Dr Wise’s study of archival material also suggests that through Mr. Cameron’s name as Levitas could suggest that he may also be of Levite ancestry. It is unknown whether the descendents of any of Emile Levita’s other three son’s remain Jewish today.
A meeting was arranged for the former Rosh Beth Din, Daayan Ehrentrau to meet David Cameron at their meeting he presented Cameron with an original Basle edition of Elijah Levita’s book Tishbi. The edition without Fagius’s preface, which has an historical British connection to it as it was banned in Britain for a time, under Queen Mary.
David Cameron stated in his address to the Jewish community prior to the 2010 general election that “Indeed, one of the highlights of my year, was meeting Daayan Ehrentrau and learning about my ancestors, the Levita’s.”
He has on numerous occasions when addressing Jewish audiences, prior to discovering the story of his Jewish ancestry expressed his admiration for the Jewish community and how he shares its values. Cameron said that,“To me, one of the biggest contributions of Judaism, is it’s understanding of what makes a responsible society.”
Alex Carson
