MORITS-GOTLIB (MOYSHE) SAPIR (MORITZ
GOTTLIEB SAPHIR) (February 8, 1795-September 5, 1858)
He
was born in Lovasberény, Hungary. He received ordination into the rabbinate in
Prague, and he later settled in Obuda (Alt-Ofen, a section of Budapest), where
he soon became known for his biting satire and his spiritually rich aphorisms
which the opposition at the time in the Obuda Jewish community sought to make
use of against the community’s leaders.
In 1820, before he debuted in print in German with his Papilloten (Pest, 1921), he wrote in
Yiddish a play in two acts entitled Der
falsher kashtan (The false Kashtan), a comedy about a wandering cantor who passes
himself off as the then celebrated cantor Kashtan and thus fools the community
of Obuda. For a time this comedy
circulated in numerous copies among the Jews of Alt-Ofen, but it was not
published. In 1900 for the first time someone
named Ben-Eliezer published the comedy in the Hungarian journal Magyar Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish
review). According to Ben-Eliezer, Sapir
was going to publish a second pamphlet: Di
falshe katalani (The false Katalani).
Di falshe kashtan was written
in Hungarian Yiddish and is full of obscenities, although the comedy possesses
a wealth of material for studies of the Yiddish dialect in Hungary. Sapir later converted to Christianity. He died in Baden.
Source:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with
a bibliography.
Benyomen Elis
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