He developed a facility for languages and an interest in comparative cultures: German and Hungarian were spoken at home, Czech and Slovak taught at school, and Hebrew was the language of religious instruction.

The family moved to Palestine in 1934 where Simeon attended religious college before graduating from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a degree involving rabbinics, Jewish philosophy and history, and a teaching diploma.

He went on to teach in high schools and saw active service in the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948 (known in Israel as the War of Independence), completing his military service as an officer in the newly-created Israeli army.

In 1952, he was appointed as Minister of Religion to the Jewish Community of the Philippines which he remained for five years.

He came to England in 1957 to take up a Fellowship at the Institute of Jewish Studies, which was then in Manchester but later relocated to London. Here, he published a number of articles and reviews characterised by their meticulous analysis and scholarly reliability.

In September 1960 he was appointed lecturer in the Department of Semitic Languages and Literatures (later the Department of Semitic Studies) at Leeds. He was to continue to serve as a member of staff until 1987, although his time at Leeds was punctuated by a visiting appointment at Tel Aviv University in 1969 and a spell of nearly four years as Professor of Hebrew at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa in the 1970s.

Dr Lowy's book The Principles of Samaritan Bible Exegesis (1977) was applauded by the academic community as a pioneering work of considerable scholarly value. He also produced works on Jewish mysticism and on Judaism and modern Western culture. His standing was evident in his long associations as a Fellow of Jews' College, London (now the London School of Jewish Studies), and as an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London.