Wednesday 29 November 2017

AVIGDOR MERMELSHTEYN

AVIGDOR MERMELSHTEYN (1850-September 14, 1925)
            He was born in Borislav (Boryslaw), Galicia, where his father ran an oil refinery.  He traveled around the region a great deal, was in the land of Israel and India (Calcutta), and lived for a certain period of time in Romania.  He experienced all phases of a Galician follower of the Jewish Enlightenment, and over the years 1879-1881, he co-edited the assimilationist, biweekly newspaper in Hebrew Haohev amo veerets moledeto (One who loves his people and the land of his birth), later turning his attention thoroughly to Hebrew educational work.  Around 1883 he funded the first Hebrew school in Przemyśl and led it until 1909, before becoming engaged in retail commerce in Belsk, Silesia.  He published a series of pamphlets in Yiddish (under the pseudonym Hatsiyoni [The Zionist]) and in Hebrew, including: A brief fun tsien tsi alle ihre liebe kinder in goles (A letter from Zion to all you beloved children in the diaspora), “sent by Hatsiyoni on the ninth of Av…” (Lemberg: H. Rohatin, 1894), 32 pp.; Khanike likhter (Hanukkah candles) (Przemyśl, 1897); Arbe kashes (Four questions); and in Hebrew he published, among other items, “Al yede haskala leḥerut” (To freedom via the Enlightenment), in Y. Fernhof’s Sifre shaashuim (Books for enjoyment) (Buczacz, 1896-1898).  He also wrote a work of grammar and left in manuscript a Hebrew reader.  He died in Bilsk.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1, with a bibliography.


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