languages. He finally became professor of Hebrew in University College,
London.

A younger contemporary of Abrahamson, the Jewish German medallist, was
Solomon (Yom Tob) Bennett (1780-1841), the engraver of Polotsk, who
spent a number of years at Copenhagen and Berlin in perfecting himself
in his art. Among his works is a highly praised bas-relief of Frederick
II, which was much admired by the professors of the Academy. An ardent
lover of liberty, of which there was little more in Germany at that time
than in Russia, he left for England, where he spent the remaining years
of his life, in Bristol. Besides being an artist and an engraver he was
a profound theologian, anxious to defend the cause of Judaism against
enemies within and without. The enemy within he attacked in his cutting
criticism of Solomon Cohen's _Rudiments of Religion_, and the enemy
outside, in his other work, _The Constancy of Israel_ (_Nezah Yisraël_,
London, 1809). He also wrote expositions on many important Biblical
topics, such as sacrifices (1815) and the Temple (1824). Having pointed
out the defects of the Authorized Version (1834), he was ambitious of
publishing a complete revised translation of the Bible. Specimens
appeared in 1841. Death intervened and frustrated his plans. As Schick
was the first Jew to translate from English into Hebrew, so Bennett was
the first after Manasseh ben Israel to write in English in behalf of his
people.[35]

If the contributions of Slavonic Jews to Latin, German, French, Dutch,
and English literature were not less considerable at that time than
those of the Jews residing in the countries where these languages were
respectively used as media, they excelled them in Hebrew literature. In
the renaissance of the holy tongue, they played the most important part
from the first. The striving for knowledge, not for the purpose of