BENDIT BEN AYZIK VING

BENDIT BEN AYZIK VING (d. September 18, 1812)

            He studied in Amsterdam, Holland.  He was the author of a chronicle—in Yiddish and partially in Hebrew—which embraced the period 1795-1812, the most important era in the history of Dutch Jewry in modern times.  His chronicle has extraordinary value for the economic, political, and cultural history of Amsterdam Jews.  He defended in this work the rights of Dutch Jews to use Yiddish (“our Jewish language” [unzer loshn yehudis], as he put it) against assimilation to the Dutch tongue which the proponents of assimilation sought.  The chronicle was found in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana (Amsterdam) and has never been published.  In 1875-1876 M. Roest began to print it in Israelitische Letterbode (Jewish mail) in the original and with a Dutch translation.  Due to space limitations, publication of the original was cut off and only the translation appeared.  Ving died in Amsterdam.

Source: Y. Shatski, “Di letste shprotsungen fun der yidisher shprakh un literatur in holand” (The last sprouts of the Yiddish language and literature in Holland), Yivo-bleter (Vilna) (1938), pp. 257-58.