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2,144 records
Wrocław
Capital city of the province of Lower Silesia, in Poland. The first reference to Jews in the vicinity of Wrocław (Lat., Vratislavia; Ger., Breslau; Czech, Vratislav) dates to before 1153; the next citation is from the be…
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Wunderbar, Re’uven Yosef
(1812–1868), historian, teacher, translator, and government-appointed rabbi. Born in Mitau, Courland guberniia (now Jelgava, Lat.), and educated in a traditional heder, Re’uven Yosef Wunderbar adopted a Haskalah (Enlight…
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Wygodzki, Jakub
(1855–1941), physician, public leader, and Zionist activist. Jakub Wygodzki was born in Bobruisk (Bobruysk). In 1860, his family moved to Vilna, where he received a traditional Jewish education. He completed his high sch…
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Wygodzki, Stanisław
(1907–1992), writer, poet, and translator. Abandoning his youthful involvement in the Zionism embraced by his father, Yitsḥak, Stanisław (Szaja) Wygodzki became active in the Communist movement and suffered political rep…
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Włocławek
Town in Kujawy-Pomorze province in northern Poland. Jews were not allowed to live in Włocławek, a bishop-owned town, until the early nineteenth century, though the town was never granted an official privilege de non tole…
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Yafeh, Mordekhai ben Avraham
(1525 or 1530–1612), rabbi, Talmudist, and kabbalist. Born in Prague, Mordekhai ben Avraham Yafeh (or Jaffe; called Ba‘al ha-Levushim [Author of the Levushim], after the name of his works) moved as a boy to Poland, where…
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Yaknehoz
(Pseudonym of Yeshaye Nisn Hakoyen Goldberg; 1858–1927), Yiddish author. Born to a poor family in the village of Stolbovshchine (on the Neman River in Minsk province), Yaknehoz came from a distinguished lineage: his fath…
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Yatskan, Shmuel Yankev
(1874–1936), publisher, editor, and publicist. Born in Vobol’niki (Vabalninkas), Lithuania, Shmuel Yankev Yatskan received a traditional Jewish education at the Ponevezh yeshiva, and rabbinical ordination in 1892. He mov…
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Ya‘akov Yitsḥak Horowitz
(The Seer of Lublin; 1745–1815), the most influential Hasidic leader in Poland and Galicia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Though he did not found a dynasty, the majority of tsadikim living at his time in tha…
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Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye
(d. 1783), rabbi and author of the first published Hasidic book. Ya‘akov Yosef of Polnoye (Pol., Połonne) served as rabbi of Shargorod, the second largest community in the Podolia region. In 1741, after coming under the …
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Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen
(1555–1614), rabbinical scholar and halakhic authority. Yehoshu‘a ben Aleksander ha-Kohen, also known as Sema‘ (an acronym of the title of his Sefer me’irat ‘enayim, which is a commentary to the Ḥoshen mishpat portion of…
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Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków
(1578–1648), halakhist and rabbi. Born in Vilna, Yehoshu‘a Heshel of Kraków served as rabbi in Grodno, Tiktin, Przemyśl, and Lwów between 1634 and 1639. In 1640, he replaced Natan Shapira for 12 months as head of the yes…
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Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el
(d. 1609), rabbi and scholar, known as Maharal of Prague. Yehudah Leib (or Löw [Heb., Liva’]; Maharal is an acronym based on the honorific Morenu ha-Rav Liva’, “our teacher, the Rabbi Löw”) was respected as an important …
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Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi
(ca. 1650–1700), popular mystical preacher. Yehudah Ḥasid ha-Levi was born in Dubno (according to other sources, in Siedlce), and went to Italy to study Kabbalah around 1678. Returning to Poland, he became the rabbi of S…
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Yehudis
(Pseudonym of Rokhl Bernshteyn; 1869–1942), Yiddish poet and writer. Virtually forgotten today, Yehudis is notable for her bold poems, several dramatic pieces, short stories, fragments of a novel, translations from Russi…
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Yeḥi’el Mikhl of Zlotshev
(1726–1781), Hasidic leader in Galicia. Yeḥi’el Mikhl was born in Brody. His father, Yitsḥak of Drohobycz (d. ca. 1760), a scholar and kabbalist, was a magid, rabbi, and dayan in Ostróg, Brody, and other towns. A Hasid o…
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Yiddish (Language)
Yiddish is the historic language of Ashkenazic (Central and East European) Jewry, and is the third principal literary language in Jewish history, after classical Hebrew and (Jewish) Aramaic. The language is characterized…
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Yiddish Actors Union
Professional association of Jewish actors in Poland in the interwar period (1919–1939). Known by its Yiddish name Yidisher Artistn Fareyn (YAF) or by the official Polish name Związek Artystów Scen Żydowskich (ZASŻ), the …
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Yiddish Criticism and Scholarship (Literary Criticism and Scholarship)
The slow development of Yiddish literary criticism in Eastern Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century mirrored the limited role that modern Yiddish literature played in Jewish cultural life at that time. A te…
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Yiddish Literary Journals (Literary Journals)
Most Russian maskilim of the 1860s were no less contemptuous of Yiddish, the noxious zhargon (jargon), than were their Berlin colleagues, yet—against the grain—the maskil Aleksander Zederbaum (1816–1893) in 1862 issued …
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