of the Sephardic or Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London, in which capacity he presided over the bicentenary of Bevis Marks Synagogue. He was invited to give the Ilchester Lectures at Oxford which were published in 1887 as Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic literature . Appointed as principal of Judith Lady Montefiore College, Ramsgate, from 1891 to 1896, he wrote valuable collection of essays accompanying the yearly reports of that institution. He was a member of the councils of the Folklore, Biblical, Archaeological, and Royal Asiatic societies, writing many papers in their interest. He was the only ordained rabbi ever to become president of The Folklore Society, in 1907–1908. In 1925, Gaster was appointed one of the six members of the honorary board of trustees (Curatorium) of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Wilna, alongside Simon Dubnow, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Edward Sapir and Chaim Zhitlowsky. Gaster made a special study of the Samaritans and became a recognised authority on their language and literature. He visited Nablus in Palestine, the headquarters of the Samaritan community, and induced them to part with manuscripts covering the whole range of their literature. Where he could not secure the originals he had copies made for him by Samaritan priests. Gaster was among the most active leaders of the Zionist movement in England, and even while in Romania he assisted in establishing the first Jewish colony in Palestine. Rising in worldwide Jewish affairs he became vice-president of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, and was a prominent figure in each succeeding congress. Gaster's residence, "Mizpah" 193 Maida Vale in London served as the venue for early talks between prominent Zionists and the Foreign Office in 1917. The first draft of the Balfour Declaration was written at the Gaster home on 7 February 1917 in the presence of Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, Baron Rothschild, Sir Mark Sykes and Herbert Samuel. Other visitors to the Gaster home included Churchill, Lenin and Sigmund Freud. Collector of manuscripts He was a great collector of manuscripts, having over two thousand, mainly Hebrew, Samaritan and Slavonic. At the outbreak of the second World War his collection was moved for safekeeping to cellars in the centre of London. However, water used to quench London fires saturated a large part of the collection, which made some of the items illegible in whole or in part. Fortunately many of them had previously been transliterated into