Simhah Pinsker

Simcha Pinsker ( born March 17, 1801 in Tarnopol, † October 29, 1864 in Odessa) was a Polish orientalist. He was a pioneer of the Karaites research and the father of Judah Leib Pinsker, the pioneer of Zionism.

Pinsker acquired great merit by the decipherment of the Karaite manuscripts from the Crimea, which the Karaites Abraham Firkowitz had given the Odessa Society of antiquities and history, what Pinsker several reports, including in Fürst's "Orient", wrote what he was soon to an authority Jewish-Arab and Karaite literature was considered.

The Russian government gave him two gold medals and honorary citizenship, and the Jewish community of Odessa began from him an annual pension of 300 rubles, after which he moved to Vienna and for decades was able to indulge in all of Jewish science.

Pinsker's work and findings made ​​for some turmoil in Jewish historiography and also forced the most recognized capacity to revise their works and ideas, until it turned out that Firkowitz had systematically falsified the question manuscripts in part.

Major works

• Likkute kadmonijot, contribution to the history of religion and literature of the Karaites, 1860
• Mewo lenikkud ha'aschuri, Vienna 1863