AVROM-KHAYIM ROZENBERG

AVROM-KHAYIM ROZENBERG (October 17, 1838-August 5, 1925)

            He was a Hebrew scholar, born in Karlin (Karalin), Polesia.  He was the brother-in-law of Shomer (N. M. Shaykevitsh) and descended from a great pedigree.  He studied a great deal of Talmud and graduated from the Zhitomir rabbinical seminary in 1872.  He served as a rabbi in Pinsk, Nikolaev, and Poltava.  In 1891 he made his way to the United States where, among other items, he published his life work, the encyclopedia of the Tanakh: Otsar hashemot (Treasury of names) in ten volumes (New York, 1923).  He began writing in Yiddish for the weekly Der idisher farmer (The Jewish farmer) in 1891 with a series of articles on agriculture among Jews in the era of the prophets and the Talmud.  He later placed work in: Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper), Minikes bleter (Minikes’s pages), Der amerikaner (The American), and Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), among others.  He wrote a great deal about the wisdom of Israel in the Hebrew and Russian-Jewish press.  In book form: Avrom avinus lebens-beshraybung (Biography of Abraham our father) (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1909), 14 pp.; Geyrush shpanyen (The expulsion from Spain) (New York: Hebrew Publishing Co.).  He translated the twelve-volume Veltgeshikhte fun uralte tsayten biz haytigen tog (World history from ancient times until the present day) of Johann Gustav Vogt (New York, 1918).  He died in Brooklyn, New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4 (with a mistaken date of death); Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967).

Berl Cohen