Marcus Weissmann-Chajes

Marcus Weissmann-Chajes
Born	(1831-01-17)January 17, 1831 Tarnów, Austrian Galicia
Died	April 30, 1914(1914-04-30) (aged 83) Vienna, Austria-Hungary[1]
Pen name	MV"Ḥ (מו״ח)
Language	Hebrew
Literary movement	Haskalah

Marcus Weissmann-Chajes (Hebrew: מרדכי ווייסמאן־חיות, romanized: Mordekhay Vaysman-Ḥayot; January 17, 1831 – April 30, 1914) also known by the Hebrew acronym MV"Ḥ (מו״ח), was a Galician Jewish writer.

Biography

Marcus Weissmann-Chajes was born in Tarnów in 1830, the son of Yitzḥak Leib.[2] He was destined for a rabbinical career, and began at a young age to receive instruction in the Talmud and in rabbinics. Among his tutors were Israel Katz Rapoport, then av beit din of Tarnów.[3] When only ten years of age he began writing Hebrew poetry, and five years later he wrote his Mappalat ha-mitkashsherim, a metrical composition on the failure of the Polish revolt.[4] Part of this work appeared in the Maggid Mishneh (1872) under the title Aḥarit mered.

In 1872 he founded in Lemberg the Maggid Mishneh, a semimonthly periodical devoted to Jewish history and to Hebrew literature; of this publication, however, only four numbers appeared. In the following year he settled in Vienna, where he edited the thirty-seventh number of Kokheve Yitzḥak [he]. During the years 1874 to 1876 he edited the Wiener Jüdische Zeitung, a Yiddish weekly.

Publications

• Mashal u-melitzah (in Hebrew). Tarnów: Druck von A. Rusinowski. 1860–1864. An alphabetically arranged collection of Talmudic proverbs rendered into metrical rimes.
• Alon bakut (in Hebrew). Lemberg: J. M. Stand. 1863. Elegies on the deaths of Mordecai Zeeb Ettinger [he] and Jacob Gutwirth.
• Mar'eh makom ve-haggahot (in Hebrew). Krotoschin. 1866. Index and glosses to the Jerusalem Talmud, appended to the Krotoschin edition.
• Magid Mishnah (in Hebrew). Lemberg. 1872.[5]
• Kokhve Yitzḥak (in Hebrew). Vienna. 1873. Collection of literary-historical, philological and poetic essays promoting study of the Hebrew language.[5]
• Ḥokhmah u-musar (in Hebrew). Vienna: Druck von Moritz Knöpfelmacher. 1882. Parables and legends rendered into metrical verse.
• Ḥatan Bereshit ve-ḥatan Torah (in Hebrew). Vienna: Druck von Moritz Knöpfelmacher. 1883. The 613 commandments derived by means of notarikon from "bereshit."
• Mille di-bediḥuta (in Hebrew). Vienna. 1884. Epigrams and humorous sayings in verse.
• "Seliḥah le-Shonerer". Ha-Maggid (in Hebrew). 32 (21). 1888. Polemic against Georg Ritter von Schönerer.[6]
• Divre ḥakhamim ve-ḥidotam (in Hebrew). Vol. 1. Vienna: Druck von Moritz Knöpfelmacher. 1892. Second edition of the Mashal u-melitzah, in which the Talmudic proverbs are supplied with rimed explanations.
• Osem bosem (in Hebrew). Vienna: Verlag von Jos. Schlesinger's Buchhandlung. 1913.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; Seligsohn, M. (1906). "Weissmann-Chajes, Marcus". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 499.

1. "R. Mordekhay Vaysman Ḥayot z"l". Ha-Mitzpeh (in Hebrew). 11 (20). Kraków: 6. May 15, 1914.
2. Wunder, Meir (1981–1982). Enzyklopediya me'orei Galicia (in Hebrew). Vol. 2. Jerusalem: Ha makhon Le-hantzaḥat Yahadut Galitzya. p. 902.
3. Sefer zikaron le-sofre Yisraʼel ha-ḥayim itanu ka-yom. Warsaw: Defus R. Meir Yeḥiel Halter. 1889. pp. 43–44.
4. Katznelson, J. L.; Ginzburg, Baron D., eds. (1910). "Вейсман Хайес, Маркус"  [Weisman Hayes, Marcus]. Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron (in Russian). Vol. 5. St. Petersburg: Brockhaus & Efron. p. 389.
5. Zeitlin, William (1890). "Weismann (-Chajes), Marcus". Bibliotheca hebraica post-Mendelssohniana (in German). Leipzig: K. F. Koehler's Antiquarium. pp. 410–411.
6. Davidson, Israel (1966) [1907]. "Descriptive Biography of the Parodies from the Beginning of the 19th Century to the Present Day". Parody in Jewish Literature. New York: AMS Press.