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More books on Jewish history have been written in the 20th century than in all previous centuries combined. And the historian who produced the most is Cecil Roth.
Roth was born March 5, 1899, in London, England. His father was a businessman who was well-versed in Jewish matters. With the help of hired tutors, he imparted to his children a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, and nurtured them in the observance of Orthodox Judaism.
By the time Cecil Roth turned 18, World War I had raged for three years, and in England every male of that age was pressed into military service. Roth was hardly the military type, but he was nevertheless drafted and sent to the battlefront in the Flanders section of Belgium -- the war theatre which later became immortalized as Flanders Fields.
Throughout his army service, he kept a small Chumash in his pocket. His colleagues, Jewish and non-Jewish, looked to him for religious guidance, and sometimes also for directional guidance. During a particularly ferocious German counterattack, the order was given to withdraw quickly. As the British column retreated along a winding road, Roth confided to his commanding officer that in his opinion, they were marching towards the enemy, perhaps to death, not away from it. His alarm was passed up the chain of command, and fortunately, the order came down to reverse direction immediately.
After the Allied victory, Roth entered Oxford University, where his field was general history, with specialization in Italian studies. He mastered the Italian language and excelled in Italian history and art. In due course, he also became fully conversant with Hebrew, Spanish, Ladino and French, and also attained a working knowledge of classical Greek and Latin. In those years, the universities did not yet recognize Yiddish as a full-fledged language; so it did not become part of his repertoire.
Roth's first scholarly article was published in 1921 when he was a second year undergraduate. Its title, The Jews of Florence signalled his two special fields of future interest -- Jewish history and Italy -- and for the moment, Italy was in the forefront.
Just one year after the appearance of this article Mussolini marched on Rome and became dictator of Italy. Jews disliked fascism, and for Roth,...