Naphtali Hirz Wessely

Hartwig Wessely (Hebrew נפתלי הרץ וייזל also: Naphtali heart Weisel, Naphtalie heart Wessely, Naphtali Wessely Hirz; * 1725 in Hamburg, † February 28, 1805 in Hamburg) was a businessman, author and educational reformer in the Age of Enlightenment.

Wessely is attributed to the Berlin Enlightenment. He worked on the side of Moses Mendelssohn on the translation of the Five Books of Moses from Hebrew - a company with a central role for the Jewish Enlightenment ( Haskalah ). Wessely's Leviticus commentary appeared in 1781 in the third volume of Mendelssohn's Pentateuch Sefer Netivot ha - Edition shalom, Berlin 1780-1783 (see Moses Mendelssohn, Collected Writings, Anniversary Issue, Vol 17). He has published mainly in Hebrew.

Life

Wessely came from a wealthy merchant family in Copenhagen, but was born in Hamburg. His father Issachar Ber Wessely provided a combination of secular (especially in modern languages ​​) and traditional education. Wessely studied, among others, at the yeshiva of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschuetz the Talmud and had with Solomon Hanau (1687-1746), an "outstanding [n ] scholars [n ] of the Hebrew language " ( Heinrich Graetz ) to tutor. Since 1763, in Berlin, where he joined the reconnaissance Moses Mendelssohn, he was interim representative of the bank Feitel in Amsterdam. There publishing his work Jen Levanon (wine of Lebanon, Amsterdam, 1765, another part of Berlin 1775). His writings earned him the reputation of a " Erneurer [s ] of the Hebrew language and its literature " ( Graetz ). Wessely was mainly because of the public reaction to his missive with the title words of truth and peace ( four parts, Berlin 1782-1785, Part 1 by David Friedlander 1782 1783 translated into German, by Elia Morpurgo into Italian ) announced the " first systematic treatise on the modern Jewish education " (Ernst A. Simon ). The first epistle was built for the tolerance patent of Joseph II in 1782 for Jews in Vienna and Lower Austria and is effective for the favor of the secular, so-called "sciences of man " before the " divine sciences " in the future education of Jewish youth a.

Family

His brother Moses Wessely was wholesale merchant in Hamburg and supplier of the French army during the Seven Years' War, later engaged in the business of Moses Ries in Hamburg. He was an intimate friend of Lessing and Mendelssohn M. and wrote, among other things, a book about banks and coins, a record of the Civic Improvement of the Jews ( 1782 ) and Letters on Lessing's " Emilia Galotti ".

His son Emanuel Wessely (* 1774, † June 5, 1823 ) inherited his father's poetic temperament, he wrote poetry. With W. Hufnagel and JJ Spalding, he published a German translation of the Hebrew original of Hartwig Wessely's epic Mosaide. His literary estate published his widow.

Works

• Gan na'ul ( Locked garden ), 2 volumes, 1765 and Amsterdam in 1766.
• Mosaide (1789 ), an epic about the life of Moses in Hebrew
• Divrei Shalom we- Emet ( four epistles ): 1 ) Divrei Shalom we- Emet (words of peace and truth ), First Epistle, Berlin 1782; 2 ) Rav tuv le- vejt Yisrael (lots of goodness for the house of Israel ), Second Epistle, Berlin 1782, 2nd edition 1785; 3 ) A mishpat ( source of law ), the third epistle, Berlin 1784; 4 ) Rehovot ( width / generosity ), Fourth missive, in Berlin in 1785.
• Wine of Lebanon ( Masechet Avot ' in Perush jen Levanon ), Berlin, 1775, Introduction. In " Meet Reason," Jewish Education programs between tradition and modernization! . Source texts from the period of the Haskalah, 1760-1811. hg. from Uta and Ingrid Lohmann Lohmann, in collaboration with Peter Dietrich. Münster, New York, Munich, Berlin: Waxmann 2005, pp. 44-55.
• Book of Ethics ( Sefer ha - Midot ) Berlin 1786, Introduction. In " Meet Reason," Jewish Education programs between tradition and modernization! . Source texts from the period of the Haskalah, 1760-1811. hg. from Uta and Ingrid Lohmann Lohmann, in collaboration with Peter Dietrich. Münster, New York, Munich, Berlin: Waxmann 2005, pp. 100-106.