Me'assefim

Ha - Meassef (also HaMe'assef ) (Hebrew המאסף; German: The Collector ) was founded in 1784 with primary involvement of Isaac Euchel Hebrew magazine. Later, the editorship of Aaron Hall - Wolfensohn was taken. The surrounding her circle of employees, supporters and well-wishers was called Meassefim ( the -trapping ).

The magazine was published monthly from the fall of 1783 in Königsberg, but due to financial difficulties had to be temporarily discontinued already in 1785. A fourth volume was published only in 1787, this time in Berlin. But this time the project was granted little luck, so it was a multi-year break publication 1790-1794, and the magazine was afterwards for some time published only sporadically. In 1796 a complete year was issued again, however, it should be the last until 1808. This year, the magazine was now revived, the new collector of Moses Philippson in Dessau under the title, but could in turn keep only a short time, so that it, in 1811, the final setting. The recent editions appeared in print already in German letters in part. The immediate cause was Mendelssohn's Bible translation. Ha - Meassef was the central organ of all education efforts in the German and partly in the eastern Judaism for a whole epoch. By Subskribentenlisten to readers from Amsterdam via Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin can be detected up to Copenhagen and Riga, although the circulation never exceeded a few hundred copies.

Isaac Euchel and his staff, were sometimes supported by Naphtali heart Wessely had a symbiosis between revitalized Hebrew tradition and literature on the one hand and the respective environmental culture on the other hoped for, and therefore they tried to modernize the Hebrew targeted, especially by means of the journal "Ha- Meassef ". In fact, the Hebrew rapidly lost ground, and the Western Jewish Enlightenment was a pioneer for rapid assimilation and even Apostasiebewegung who could collect the Reform Judaism only a part. This resulted in a deep divide between Western and Eastern Jews.