Edwin Samuel, 2nd Viscount Samuel

Edwin Herbert Samuel, 2nd Viscount Samuel CMG (Template:Lang-he; 11 September 1898 – 14 November 1978), was the son of Herbert Samuel and the father of Professor David Samuel. He served in the Jewish Legion. He also served as the last Mandate-era Director of the Palestine Broadcasting Service.

He was educated at Westminster School and Balliol College, Oxford. In the spring of 1917 he joined the Royal Artillery and was posted to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. After the First World War he joined the Mandatory Government in Palestine.

As a Viscount, he served as a peer in the House of Lords. There, one of his significant acts was to have the law which forbade marriage between a woman and her brother-in-law repealed. His explicit intent was to allow a man to fulfill his responsibility under the biblical Judaic law of Levirate marriage. That Judaic Levirate law stated that, when a woman's husband dies, it was the explicit responsibility of her brother-in-law to marry her and take care of her.

Further reading

• Edwin Samuel: A Lifetime in Jerusalem. The Memoirs of the Second Viscount Samuel (Transaction Publishers, 1970).