Menachem Mendel Lefin

Menachem Mendel Lefin ( Mendel Levin, Mendel or Mendel Satanower Lewin, Satanower or Menachem Mendel Mikolajewer etc.; * 1749 Satanow, Podolia, now Khmelnytskyi Oblast; † Tarnopol in 1826) a Hebrew writer, and important representative of the first period was the Galician - Russian Haskalah. He was called the father of the Galician Haskalah.

Classification

The brought out of Lefin books (often translations of other authors ) were very popular and partly a formative, so had its ethical business Heshbon ha - nefesh ( " account of the soul", based on Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack ) means that in the Jewish youth associations were created, who wanted to set up their lives according to the rules of this work.

The works written by him were very common at the time, content rather insignificant and dependent, but important for the training of a smoother, more populist Hebrew prose style.

Life

In his youth, he graduated from the traditional biblical and Talmudic studies and proved to be of great learning. He was encouraged to own mathematical and scientific investigations through his acquaintance with Delmedigos Sefer Elim.

A longer stay in Berlin at the beginning of the 1780 - years brought him into contact with the circle of Moses Mendelssohn and Hartwig Wessely.

After his return from Berlin he settled in 1783 in Mikolajow, where he became the prince of educators and the memorandum Essai d' un plan de reforme ayant pour object d' éclarer la nation Juive en Pologne et la redresser par ses mœurs wrote.

Around 1800 came Mendel Lefin to Brody, the center of his term of Galician Enlightenment, and became the leader of the local Maskilim, which included, inter alia, Krochmal, Rapoport and Joseph Perl.

Later he went to Petersburg and to various places in Podolia and Galicia, where he was again employed as a private tutor and educator in some cases. He spent his last years in his home in Satanow.

Lefins ambition was to raise the general level of education of his countrymen as well as to popularize the Jewish Enlightenment. To improve the knowledge of the Bible, the translation of selected texts in the Yiddish vernacular should help, but the protests directed against the part of the already Maskilim were so severe that even the printing of the first corresponding text ( Mishlei ) was omitted.

A reproduction of the leader of the Perplexed in a simple folk dialect remained fragmentary.

Works (selection)

  • Iggerot ha - Chochma 1789 ( about science)
  • Moda la- binah, 1789
  • Essai d' un plan de reforme ayant pour object d' éclarer la nation Juive en Pologne et la redresser par ses mœurs, 1789 (plans to improve the situation and to the internal reform of Polish Jewry: Call for establishment of normal schools with Polish language of instruction, establishment a Jewish community organization, etc. )
  • Refuot ha -am, first edition Berlin 1789 ( very popular medical book for folk medicine, it was used by the Jewish hospitals as a guideline for nursing)
  • Heshbon ha - nefesh, 1812 ( instructions at the right conduct of life )
  • Mishlei, Tarnopol 1813 ( Yiddish selection Bible translation )
  • The erschter Chussid, about 1813 ( about the nature of Hasidism )
  • Massaoth hajam, Lemberg 1818 ( travel books in the area of the North and South Poles )
  • More Newuchim posthumously in 1829 (modern Hebrew paraphrase of Tibbonidischen translation of the leader of the Perplexed, incomplete)
  • Yiddish translations of Ecclesiastes, the Psalms and the Song of Songs appeared in 1873 from the estate in Odessa

Literature (selection )

  • Max Letteris, Sikaron ba - sefer, Vienna 1864
  • M. Pines, The History of the Jewish German literature, Leipzig 1913
  • N. M. Gelber, for two centuries, Vienna 1924
  • Dubnow, World History of the Jewish People, 1925 ff (Vol. VIII)
  • Wininger 1925 et seq, Vol IV
  • Michael Berkowicz, articles SATANOWER, MENDEL, in: Jewish Encyclopedia, Berlin 1927, Vol IV, 2, 122-123 Sp
  • Günter Stemberger, History of Jewish Literature, Munich 1977, p 180

Weblinks (selection)

  • The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
  • Author
  • Literature ( Hebrew)
  • Person (Judaism )
  • Born in 1749
  • Died in 1826
  • Man
Ternopil Naphtali Hirz Wessely Mykolaiv Yiddish language Samuel ibn Tibbon Integrated Authority File
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