Raphael Loewe, the doyen of medieval Hebrew studies in Britain, celebrated his eightieth birthday in 1999. In anticipation of this happy event, three of his colleagues and former pupils, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Michael Weitzman and the undersigned, decided to mark the occasion with the publication of a volume of essays. Sadly, Michael Weitzman died on 21 March 1998, at the age of fifty-one, and it was subsequently agreed that I should take over sole responsibility for editing the volume. Since Raphael Loewe has a longstanding association with Cambridge University, I was delighted that Cambridge University Press undertook to publish it.

The purpose of the present volume is not only to celebrate Professor Loewe's long life in the service of Hebrew scholarship, but also to celebrate in an appropriately scholarly fashion the current vibrancy of Hebrew scholarship relating to the medieval period and to reflect on its achievements during the latter part of the twentieth century.

The establishment of major Jewish research and teaching institutes in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century and of the Hebrew University, followed by other universities and institutes, in Israel in the twentieth, has borne abundant fruit, which has helped to offset to some extent the irreparable loss of the great institutions of eastern Europe. Meanwhile in the countries of western Europe the universities and state-funded research centres have continued to produce work of the highest level.