Tobias Gutmann pen

Tobias Gutmann Feder (* around 1760 in Przedbórz ; † 1817 in Tarnopol ) was a protagonist of the Jewish Enlightenment in Galicia . He wrote grammatical and exegetical writings as well as satires in the Hebrew language .

Life

While traveling in Germany, Poland and Galicia, Feder hired himself in mostly lower positions as a cantor, teacher and preacher. In succession to the Gaon of Vilna, he polemicized as a satirist against Hasidism . When Menachem Mendel Lefin translated the biblical book of proverbs into Yiddish , however, he had a diatribe ( Kol mechazezím , "The Voice of the Archers") circulated in handwriting in which Hartwig Wessely , Isaac Euchel and other representatives of the Haskala talk about a fictional conversation in heaven lead this translation. The script reproaches Lefin for choosing Yiddish of all things instead of a more suitable language such as German or French, compares his translation with vomit and excrement and mocks the alleged incomprehensibility of Yiddish, which is a confused mixture of languages ​​and at most for the uneducated, especially Women are good.

Jánkew Schmúel Byk (1772–1831), a merchant and follower of Lefins, responded to this on January 1, 1815 in an open letter that is an early apologetics of Yiddish. He asked Feder not to publish his pamphlet because his criticism of Lefin was too personal and also endangered the Haskala. On the matter, he contradicted that Yiddish is an independent language, also recognized as such by non-Jews, the historical legacy of Ashkenazi Judaism, literary developable and, in the application of the scholar, a suitable medium to bring education to the uneducated. On April 30, 1815, Feder replied with a declaration that he did not want to attack Lefin's honor, but that he could not revoke his convictions on the language question either. In return for payment of 100 Polish zlotys to compensate the printer and the publisher, he agreed to forego publication in print. Byk was able to raise the requested amount from Lefin's circle of friends, and Feder seems to have kept his word, as the first verifiable print edition of the work did not appear until 1853.

The controversy, at the end of which Feder is said to have withdrawn his work not out of conviction but in exchange for a payment, had little effect in its time, but gained importance in the 19th century as part of the development of a Yiddish language awareness for the emerging Yiddish language movement.

literature

• Marion Aptroot / Roland Gruschka: Yiddish: History and Culture of a World Language , CH Beck, Munich 2010, p. 99f.
• Yehudah Friedlander: Tobias Gutmann Spring: The Archers Voice . In: Zehut, May 1981, pp. 275-303
• Josef Meisl: Haskalah. History of the Enlightenment Movement among the Jews in Russia . Schwetschke & Sohn, Berlin 1919, p. 47
• Nancy Sinkoff: Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands . Brown University, Providence 2004 (= Brown Judaic Studies, 336), p. 178ff.
• William Zeitlin: Kiryat sefer - Bibliotheca hebraica post-Mendelssohniana , 2nd revised. u. exp. Ed., Leipzig 1891–1895, pp. 81–82 (list of Feder's writings)

Web links

• Herman Rosenthal, A. Rhine:  FEDER, TOBIAS GUTMANN. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906.