Benjacob

Isaac ben Jacob Benjacob (January 10, 1801, Ramygala – July 2, 1863, Vilnius) was a Jewish, Russian-born Maskil, best known as a bibliographer, author, and publisher. His 17-volume Hebrew Bible included Rashi, Mendelssohn as well as his own Mikraei Kodesh which "emended" the biblical text and helped spread the Haskalah movement.

Before he learned Russian his parents moved to Vilnius, "and there he received instruction in Hebrew grammar and rabbinical lore."

Benjacob began to write early, and composed short poems and epigrams in pure Biblical Hebrew which are among the best of their kind in Neo-Hebraic literature. For several years he lived in Riga, where he was engaged in business, always studying and writing in his leisure hours. Later he became a publisher and book-seller and went to Leipzig, where he published his first work, Miktamim ve-Shirim (Epigrams and Songs), which also contains an important essay on epigrammatic composition (Leipzig, 1842). Of the other works which he published there, his corrected edition of R. Bahya ibn Pakuda's Chovot ha-Levavot, with an introduction, a short commentary, and a biography of the author, together with notes and fragments of Joseph Kimhi's translation by H. Jellinek, is the most valuable (Leipzig, 1846; Königsberg, 1859, without the introduction).

In 1848 Benjacob returned to Vilnius, and for the next five years he and the poet Abraham Dob Bär Lebensohn were engaged in the publication of the Bible with a German language translation (in Hebrew type) and the new Biurim (Vilius, 1848–53, 17 vols.), which did much good as a means of spreading the knowledge of German and a proper understanding of the Hebrew text among the Jews in Russia. When this work was done he brought out his corrected and amended edition of Chaim Joseph David Azulai's Shem ha-Gedolim (Vilnius, 1853; Vienna, 1862), which is still the standard edition of that important work. In 1862 Benjacob announced his intention to begin the publication of popular editions of classical Hebrew works which had become rare or high-priced. He died soon after the appearance of the first volume of Azariah dei Rossi's Meor 'Enayim, with which he started the series (Vilnius, 1863).

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