Menachem Mendel Lefin

This article explains the Hebrew writer Satanower ; for the Hebrew writer Satanow see Isaak Satanow .

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

classification

The books published by Lefin (often translations by other authors) were very popular and in some cases educational, so his ethical work Cheschbon ha-nefesch ("Accountability of the Soul", based on Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack ) resulted in Jewish youth Associations were founded that wanted to organize their lives according to the rules of this work.

The works he wrote were very widespread in his time, insignificant in terms of content and dependent, but important for the development of a more supple, folk-oriented Hebrew prose style.

Life

In his youth he completed the conventional biblical and talmudic studies and showed great erudition. Through his acquaintance with Delmedigos Sefer Elim he was stimulated to do his own mathematical-scientific investigations.

An extended stay in Berlin in the early 1780s brought him into contact with the circle around Moses Mendelssohn and Hartwig Wessely . After returning from Berlin, he settled in Mikolajow in 1783 , where he became a princely educator and wrote the memorandum Essai d'un plan de reforme ayant pour object d'éclarer la nation juive en Pologne et la redresser par ses mœurs . Around 1800 Mendel Lefin came to Brody , which was the center of the Galician Enlightenment at the time, and became the leader of the Maskilim there, to which, among others, Kroiell , Rapoport and Josef Perl belonged. Later he went to Petersburg and to various places in Podolia and Galicia, where he z. T. was again active as a private tutor and educator. He spent the last years of his life in his homeland in Satanow.

Lefin's endeavor was to raise the general level of education of his compatriots and to popularize the Jewish Enlightenment. The translation of selected texts into Yiddish colloquial language was supposed to help improve knowledge of the Bible , but the protests against this were already so violent on the part of the Maskilim that the first corresponding text ( Mischle ) was not printed .

A rendering of the Fiihrer of the Undecided in a simple folk dialect remained fragmentary.

Works (selection)

• Iggerot ha-chochma , 1789 (on natural sciences)
• 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 internal reform of Polish Jewry: demand for the 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 on folk medicine, it also served the Jewish hospitals as a guide for nursing)
• Cheshbon ha-nefesch , 1812 (Instructions for right living)
• Mischle , Tarnopol 1813 (Yiddish selection translation of biblical texts)
• The Shattered Chussid , ca.1813 (on the essence of Hasidism)
• Massaoth hajam , Lemberg 1818 (travel descriptions to the area of ​​the North and South Poles)
• More Newuchim , posthumously 1829 (modern Hebrew paraphrase of the Tibbonid translation of the leader of the undecided , incomplete)
• Yiddish translations of the Koheleth, the Psalms and the Song of Songs appeared in 1873 from the Odessa estate

literature

• Max Letteris : Sikaron ba-sefer. Vienna 1864.
• M. Pines: The History of Jewish-German Literature. Leipzig 1913.
• Nathan Michael Gelber : From two centuries. Vienna 1924.
• Simon Dubnow : World History of the Jewish People. 1925 ff. (Vol. VIII)
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. IV, Orient Printer, Chernivtsi 1930.
• Michael Berkowicz: SATANOWER, MENDEL. In: Jewish Lexicon . Vol. IV, 2, Berlin 1927, Col. 122-123.
• Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature. Munich 1977, p. 180.
• Nancy Sinkoff: Sefer Ḥeshbon ha-Nefesh. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 412-414.

Web links (selection)

• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe