YITSKHOK ZIBENBERG (ISAAC SIEBENBERGER)

YITSKHOK ZIBENBERG (ISAAC SIEBENBERGER) (1797-April 2, 1879)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland.  He was known as “Itshe Bal Dikduk” (Itshe the Grammarian).  His whole life a religious Jew, he was at the same time a leader and disseminator of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Poland.  He contributed work to: Jüdisches Volksblatt (Jewish people’s newspaper, in German), Hamagid (The preacher) in Lik, and Hamelits (The advocate) in Odessa, and elsewhere—in these he published poems and essays.  He authored a series of religious texts, among them: Maagal yashar (Straight circle), elementary textbook for Hebrew, with texts in Hebrew and Yiddish, and with a short dictionary of Hebrew, German, and Judeo-German words (Warsaw, 1839), 44 pp., second printing (1840), 84 pp., third printing (1863), 134 pp., fourth printing (1866), 216 pp.; Otsar hashorashim hakelali (General treasury of roots), Hebrew-Judeo-German lexicon to the Tanakh and the Mishna (Warsaw, 1938), 78 pp., second printing (1846), third printing (1848), 116 pp., fourth printing (1866), 134 pp.  He translated from German and French (with poems and text into Hebrew and Judeo-German) various apocryphal works, such as: Ḥaye tuvya (The life of Tuvya)—“The life of Tuvya the saintly man of Ninevah,” “The story of Shoshana in Babylonia,” and “Destruction of the false deity of Babylonia”—(Warsaw, 1839), 84 pp.; Megilat yehudit (The scroll of Judith) (Warsaw, 1940), 32 pp.; Sefer barukh ben neriyahu (The book of Barukh ben Neriyahu), “including four stories of yore” (Warsaw, 1841), 64 pp.; Sifre makabi (The books of the Maccabis) (Warsaw, 1943), 64 pp.  Until his death he lived solely from his work as a proofreader of Hebrew religious texts and German and French books.  He died in Warsaw.

Sources: A. Tenenboym, in Hamagid (Lik) 18 (1879); Zalmen Reyzen, in Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur un prese (Handbook of Yiddish literature and the press) (Warsaw, 1914), p. 265; Dr. Y. Shatski, Geshikhte fun yidn in varshe (History of the Jews in Warsaw), vol. 3 (New York, 1953), pp. 283, 443; Bet eked sefarim.

Khayoim Leyb Fuks`