Paul Levertov

LEVERTOFF, PAUL PHILIP (1878–1954), apostate and theologian. Levertoff, who was born in Orsha, Belorussia, into a ḥasidic family, was converted to Christianity in 1895. After studying theology in Russian and German universities, traveling in Europe, Palestine, and Asia Minor, and working for a time in Warsaw and as professor of Old Testament and rabbinics at the Institutum Delitzschianum in Leipzig (1912–18), he was appointed librarian and sub-warden of St. Deiniols Library, Hawarden (Wales; 1919–22). From 1922 until his death, he was director of the London Diocesan Council for work among the Jews (formerly The East London Fund for the Jews) and edited its quarterly journal, The Church and the Jews. He also took a leading part in the Hebrew Christian movement, translated considerable parts of the Anglican liturgy into Hebrew, and conducted Christian services partly in Hebrew at the North West London church where he was minister. Levertoff was a prolific writer on liturgical and theological subjects in Hebrew, German, and English. He contributed to periodicals and encyclopedias, translated the Midrash Sifre on Numbers (1926), and cooperated with H. Sperling in the translation of the Zohar into English (1933). (Source)

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Paul Levertoff, had been a teacher at Leipzig University and as a Russian Hassidic Jew was held under house arrest during the First World War as an 'enemy alien' by virtue of his ethnicity. He emigrated to the UK and became an Anglican priest after converting to Christianity. In the mistaken belief that he would want to preach in a Jewish neighbourhood, he was housed in Ilford, within reach of a parish in Shoreditch, in East London. (Source)