MOYSHE-ARN VIZEN (MOSES AARON WIESEN)

MOYSHE-ARN VIZEN (MOSES AARON WIESEN) (1878-February 18, 1953)

            He was born in Baranov, western Galicia, and grew up in neighboring Torne (Tarnov, Tarnów).  He studied in religious primary school and in a small Hassidic synagogue.  He later turned to secular subject matter, studied philosophy and philology in Switzerland, and in 1903 received his doctoral degree.  He became a resident of Vienna where, over the course of many years, he taught Hebrew in the Vienna Hebrew Pedagogium (Teachers’ Academy) and made a name for himself with his textbook Dikduk halashon haivrit (Grammar of the Hebrew language).  A polyglot, he had from his earliest years taken an interest in Jewish folklore.  He published a portion of his folklorist material in book form: Ḥokhme un kharifes, mayses, anekdotn, toyres, mesholim un khkires (Wisdom and subtlety, tales, anecdotes, laws, proverbs, and speculation) (Vienna, 1927), 151 pp.  In his preface to the collection, the author explains that he intentionally did not write down the stories in a literary style.  He thought it more appropriate “to write, adapted to the contents of the book, in a simple Yiddish, just as I heard it everywhere in my youth, particularly in religious primary school and synagogue study chamber.”  In 1938 he escaped from Nazi Vienna to Israel.  He was active in the last years of his life in a pedagogical government office of the Israeli state.  He died in Tel Aviv.

Sources: Obituary in Leshonenu laam (Jerusalem) (Nisan 1953); obituary in Hadoar (New York) (May 8, 1953); B. Ts. Tsangen, in Torne (Tarnov), remembrance volume (Tel Aviv, 1954), pp. 196, 220, 313, 328; G. Bader, Medina veḥakhameha (The state and its sages) (New York, 1934), p. 83; Dr. M. Naygreshl, in Fun noentn over (New York) 1 (1955), p. 393; Dov Sadan, Kaarat egozim o elef bediha ubediha, asufat humor beyisrael (A bowl of nuts or one thousand and one jokes, an anthology of humor in Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1953), see index; Dov Sadan, ed., Kaarat tsimukim o elef bediha ubediha, asufat humor beyisrael (A bowl of raisins or one thousand and one jokes, an anthology of humor in Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1952), see index.