Biography of the REV. Henry Aaron Stern D.D.

Henry Aaron Stern (182085) of German Jewish birth moved to London in 1839 converted to Christianity and became a lifelong missionary for the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. With his wife he preached in Palestine Babylon Constantinople Baghdad Persia and to the Karaite Jews of the Crimea. Famously in 1863 he was caught in a diplomatic dispute in Ethiopia that led to his imprisonment and eventual rescue five years later by a British military force. Stern was made a doctor of divinity in 1881. He wrote three memoirs which were drawn on by Albert Augustus Isaacs (18261903) a vicar at Leicester who knew Stern personally. Isaacs''s biography first published in 1886 is hagiographic and written with religiosity. Nonetheless it includes informative accounts of missionary work among Jewish communities and remains a valuable source on the orientalism of Victorian Britain.