Tudor Parfitt

Tudor Vernon Parfitt (born 10 October 1944) is a British historian, writer, broadcaster, traveller and adventurer. He specialises in the study of Jewish communities around the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Some of these communities have been recognised only since the late 20th century as having ancient Jewish origins.

Parfitt is Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was the founding director of the Centre for Jewish Studies. He is now Senior Associate Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He is Corresponding Senior Fellow of the Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappe, Belgium and chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Paris-based Projet Aladin. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the United Kingdom. He was appointed visiting Distinguished Professor at Florida International University in 2012 and Alumni Fellow at the Hutchins Center, Harvard College.

Parfitt has published over 100 articles and written, edited or translated 27 books.

He was born Vernon Tudor Parfitt in Porth, Wales, in 1944, as the son of Vernon (a headmaster) and Margaret (Sears) Parfitt. He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School.

In 1964 Parfitt spent a gap year with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Jerusalem, where he worked with handicapped people, some of whom were Holocaust survivors. Upon his return to Britain, he studied Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Oxford. In 1968 he was awarded the Goodenday Fellowship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He completed a D.Phil at Oxford with David Patterson and Albert Hourani, on the history of the Jews in Palestine and their relations with their Muslim neighbours. He expanded it for publication by the Royal Historical Society.

In 1972 Parfitt was appointed lecturer in Hebrew language, literature and history at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 1974 he was appointed Parkes Fellow at the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton in England. Shortly afterward, he took up a lectureship in Modern Hebrew at SOAS. His first body of work interrogated the received wisdom about the nature of the revival of the Hebrew language.[6]

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