Rabbi Eli Cashdan (1905–1998) was a distinguished Orthodox Jewish scholar, translator, and educator, serving as senior lecturer in Semitics at London’s Jews’ College from 1950 until his retirement in 1975. Born in Starye Dorogi (now Belarus) and raised in Liverpool, he received rabbinic ordination by age seventeen, earned a First Class honours degree in Semitics from London University, and trained in law at Lincoln’s Inn. During World War II, he served as senior Jewish chaplain (Wing Commander) with the RAF in the Middle East.
A prolific contributor to Jewish literature, Cashdan authored commentaries for the Soncino Press on Bible and Talmud, produced the “Cashdan Siddur” (1990), and completed a new English translation of the Psalms in 1997 praised by Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as “simple, direct, lucid and intelligible.”