Abraham Moses Luncz

Abraham Moses Luncz

Abraham Moses Luncz ( Hebrew אברהם משה לונץ; * December 2, 1854 in Kaunas , Russian Empire ; † April 14, 1918 in Jerusalem ) was a Jewish scholar, author, and publisher.

Live and act

Born in Kaunas (dt. Outdated chewing ), he came to Jerusalem with his parents at the age of 15, learned there on the yeshiva "Ez Chaim" (dt. Tree of life ) and was there among other things in secular studies of the literature of the Haskala , of the Jewish Enlightenment.

Together with Israel Dow Frumkin , he founded the first public library in Jerusalem, which they named after Moses Montefiore , but which was closed again a short time later. In 1873 he began to publish articles in Frumkin's literary journal Habazeleth , in which he sharply criticized the Chaluka , the organized collection of funds for the Jewish settlement of Palestine and the gabbaim responsible for the collection . On the other hand, he supported the Jerusalem Jewish community against the attacks by Heinrich Graetz . He wrote several geographical writings, in 1876 he wrote a Hebrew leader of the city of Jerusalem with the title - "Netivot Zion Wejeruschalajm" (Eng. Ways in Zion and Jerusalem ).

Luncz went blind at the age of 24 and together with Dr. Koisewski an institution for the blind in Jerusalem. He owned a printing press with which he published the work of several Palestinian scholars, among the first were Estori Farchi's Kaftor waPerach ( Eng . "Button and Flower") and Josef Schwarz's Twu'ot haAretz ( Eng . "Harvest"). In 1904 he printed a new edition of the Jerusalem Talmud with commentaries and an introduction.

Until his death in 1918 he occupied himself with the writing and editing of geographical material on Palestine . His work contains a wealth of information regarding the activities of the Jews of Jerusalem and their hometowns. He was buried on the Mount of Olives .

Works

• "Netivot Zion weJeruschalajm" (vol. I., 1876)
• "Yearbook for the promotion of a scientifically accurate knowledge of the present and the old Palestine" (Jerusalem, 6 volumes, published between 1881 and 1903)
• "Literary Palestine Almanac" (10 volumes, published between 1881 and 1904)

Literature on Luncz

• Jewish Encyclopedia : Luncz, Abraham Moses (around 1901, English)
• John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 452.

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