Professor Dr. A. Berliner : die festlichen Veranstaltungen zur Feier seines 70jährig. Geburtstages.

Scott Offen Fund in memory of Herbert OffenCataloging12772 [Only Ed.]Only edition. 28 pp., port., 192:127 mm., wide margins, light age staining. A very good copy bound in modern plastic wrappers. Rare - This booklet does not appear in the catalogs of any of the major libraries.A booklet in German and Hebrew published in honor of the celebration of the 70th birthday of Dr. Abraham Berliner(1933-1915). Pages 25-28 contain an address, in Hebrew, by R. A. Brody.Dr. Abraham Berliner (1833—1915), scholar and author. Berliner's vast knowledge of rabbinic literature and of ancient and modern languages was mostly self-taught . After succeeding his father as teacher in his native Obersitzko, he became preacher and teacher in Arnswalde (both in the province of Posen, then Germany).From 1858 to 1865 he lectured at the bet ha-midrash of the Berlin Talmudic Society out of which developed the Rabbinical Seminary, founded by Azriel Hildesheimer in 1873. Here Berliner lectured in Jewish history and literature and was also librarian. In subsequent years he paid frequent visits to the important libraries of Germany, England, Holland, France, and, above all, Italy, in search of their Jewish treasures. He prepared the first critical edition of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch, giving Rashi's sources and explanatory notes (1866).In the completely revised second edition (1905) he added a vocabulary of foreign words used in the commentary. Berliner pursued his Rashi studies in a number of important monographs and also turned his attention to other medieval commentators (Peletat Soferim, 1872, 19662). He also provided a modern edition of Targum Onkelos (1884). Berliner's historical studies were chiefly devoted to Italian Jewry, as shown by his three-volume Geschichte der Juden in Rom (1893).On the history of German Jewry, he wrote Aus dem Leben der deutschen Juden im Mittelalter (1861, second revised and enlarged edition 1900, 19373; Hebrew translation, 1900). Complementary to this work was a monograph Persoenliche Beziehungen zwischen Juden und Christen im Mittelalter (1882).Berliner also wrote biographies of Israel Isserlein and of Isaiah Berlin and a defense of Maimonides against the accusation of apostasy (Moses ben Maimon, sein Leben... 2 (1914), 103ff.). Berliner published many bibliographical studies and works on liturgy and Talmud. He discovered in Rome parts of commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud by Hananel b.On that occasion too appeared a Festschrift in his honor, edited by A. Freimann and M. Hildesheimer (Birkat Avraham, 1903) with a bibliography of his writings. A three-volume collection of Berliner's writings was planned but only the first appeared in 1913. A two-volume collection was published in Hebrew (1945—49).Berliner was a staunch supporter of Orthodoxy and an opponent of Reform. He supported Hildesheimer in the establishment of the Adass Jisroel secessionist congregation and acted as the chairman of its council for many years. Yet in his Randbemerkungen he had suggested certain changes in prayer texts and customs, which were not to the liking of some of his Orthodox friends.Source: EJ20051220Digital imageDescription based on print version record