Chimen Abramsky (Hebrew: שמעון אברמסקי; 12 September 1916 – 14 March 2010) was emeritus professor of Jewish studies at University College London.[1][2] His first name is pronounced Shimon.[3]
His father arrived in London in December 1931 after being expelled from the Soviet Union. The next year Chimen arrived with his mother and younger brother.[2][6][7] Three years later, in 1935, he travelled to Palestine to study history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem but became involved in socialist campus politics. On one occasion he was beaten up by future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir – then a leading figure in the rightwing Irgun.[1] Abramsky was described as an atheist.[4]
Visiting London in the summer of 1939 to see his parents Abramsky was unable to return to Palestine because of World War 2. Instead he started working at Shapiro, Vallentine & Co., London's oldest Jewish bookshop and publisher of Jewish scholarly books, where he met Miriam Nirenstein, the proprietor's daughter. They married in 1940 and had two children, Jack and Jenny. Jack, a mathematician, is the father of Sasha Abramsky.[8] Jenny became of the BBC's longest-serving senior executives.[9][1][10] Abramsky was the uncle by marriage of the socialist historian Raphael Samuel. The house Chimen and Miriam shared in Highgate, Northern London,[11] was considered an important destination for thinkers and scholars.[6]
In 1966, he was invited to take up a newly created lectureship in modern Jewish history at University College London.
In a well-known incident, Abramsky once hosted the Japanese prince and Hebrew scholar Prince Takahito Mikasa at the University College London's Institute of Jewish Studies in 1975.[12]
