Remembered today as one of the great popularizers of Jewish history, in the inter-war year the Anglo-Jewish historian Cecil Roth was unable to secure an academic appointment until 1939. As such he turned to writing popular history as a means of support, and while some academic historians discounted his work (then and now), an examination of Roth’s correspondence with individuals such Henry Hurwitz of the Intercollegiate Menorah Society, reveal that Roth worked assiduously to develop an approach to history that would be both academically sound and “useful” to those readers who wanted to understand the contours of Jewish life.
Throughout much of his career the Anglo-Jewish historian Cecil Roth visited the U.S. and lectured to American Jewish students. Indeed, his first academic appointment was as a visiting professor at the Jewish Institute in Religion in New York City, and he was a regular teacher at the summer institutes of the Intercollegiate Menorah Society. Yet, he only wrote one short article (in 1963) that focused exclusively on American Jewish history, which was commissioned by Jacob Rader Marcus, the “Dean of American Jewish Historians.” An examination of Roth’s correspondence over a thirty plus year period reveals that his discussions of the nature and purpose of Jewish history was largely shaped by his relationship with American Jewry.