Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Julius Eisenstein
Julius (Judah David) Eisenstein (November 12, 1854 – May 17, 1956) (Hebrew: יהודה דוד אייזנשטיין) was a Polish-Jewish-American anthologist, diarist, encyclopedist, Hebraist, historian, philanthropist, and Orthodox polemicist born in Międzyrzec Podlaski (known in Yiddish as Mezritch d'Lita), a town with a large Jewish majority in what was then Congress Poland. He died in New York City at the age of 101.
Yehuda Dovid Eizensztejn, as he was named at birth, was the second of two children born to Rabbi Zeev Wolf and Toba Bluma (née Barg). His sister, Henna, was a year and a half older. When he was ten years old, his father became the first Jew from Mezritch to emigrate to the United States.
As a child, therefore, his education in Talmud was left to his paternal grandfather, Azriel Zelig, the son of Noson Neta Eizensztejn, a Talmudic scholar and dyer of indigo originally from the village of Stawiska (in Yiddish, Stavisk). His antecedents had moved there from Königsberg and claimed to be direct descendants of Rashi.
In 1872, Toba Bluma emigrated to the United States with her son and daughter and joined Zeev Wolf in New York. There, Yehuda Dovid anglicized his first name to Julius and adopted the American spelling of his family name. He married the following year.
Eisenstein's parents eventually divorced, after which his father made aliyah to Jerusalem, where he remarried and raised a second family. Both Zeev Wolf and Toiba Bluma's family were proto-Zionists. Her maternal grandfather, Rabbi Tzvi Zeev (in Yiddish, Hirsch Wolf) Fiszbejn, had already moved to Jerusalem with his two sons, Abraham and Isaac, and other descendants in 1863. Tzvi Zeev was a wealthy brush manufacturer in Mezritch and financed the construction of the original Etz Chaim Yeshiva in the Old City. They and Zeev Wolf are all buried near each other in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery.
Eisenstein loved Hebrew and established America's first society for the Hebrew language, Shoharei Sfat Ever. He was also the first to translate the Constitution of the United States into Hebrew and Yiddish (New York, 1891). Other early writings of his are Ma'amarei BaMasoret, ib. 1897, and The Classified Psalter (Pesukei dezimra), a Hebrew text with a new translation (1899). He also attempted to translate and explain a modified text of the Shulchan Aruch.
In HaModi'a laHadashim (New York) for 1901, he published, under the title LeDorot Golei Russiya b'America, a sketch of the history of Russo-Jewish emigration to America. His History of the First Russo-American Jewish Congregation appeared in No. 9 of the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, in 1901.
Eisenstein contributed more than 150 entries to the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, from which much of the above biography was based, and he authored thousands of articles in newspapers, journals, encyclopedias, and anthologies.
Hub AI
Julius Eisenstein AI simulator
(@Julius Eisenstein_simulator)
Julius Eisenstein
Julius (Judah David) Eisenstein (November 12, 1854 – May 17, 1956) (Hebrew: יהודה דוד אייזנשטיין) was a Polish-Jewish-American anthologist, diarist, encyclopedist, Hebraist, historian, philanthropist, and Orthodox polemicist born in Międzyrzec Podlaski (known in Yiddish as Mezritch d'Lita), a town with a large Jewish majority in what was then Congress Poland. He died in New York City at the age of 101.
Yehuda Dovid Eizensztejn, as he was named at birth, was the second of two children born to Rabbi Zeev Wolf and Toba Bluma (née Barg). His sister, Henna, was a year and a half older. When he was ten years old, his father became the first Jew from Mezritch to emigrate to the United States.
As a child, therefore, his education in Talmud was left to his paternal grandfather, Azriel Zelig, the son of Noson Neta Eizensztejn, a Talmudic scholar and dyer of indigo originally from the village of Stawiska (in Yiddish, Stavisk). His antecedents had moved there from Königsberg and claimed to be direct descendants of Rashi.
In 1872, Toba Bluma emigrated to the United States with her son and daughter and joined Zeev Wolf in New York. There, Yehuda Dovid anglicized his first name to Julius and adopted the American spelling of his family name. He married the following year.
Eisenstein's parents eventually divorced, after which his father made aliyah to Jerusalem, where he remarried and raised a second family. Both Zeev Wolf and Toiba Bluma's family were proto-Zionists. Her maternal grandfather, Rabbi Tzvi Zeev (in Yiddish, Hirsch Wolf) Fiszbejn, had already moved to Jerusalem with his two sons, Abraham and Isaac, and other descendants in 1863. Tzvi Zeev was a wealthy brush manufacturer in Mezritch and financed the construction of the original Etz Chaim Yeshiva in the Old City. They and Zeev Wolf are all buried near each other in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery.
Eisenstein loved Hebrew and established America's first society for the Hebrew language, Shoharei Sfat Ever. He was also the first to translate the Constitution of the United States into Hebrew and Yiddish (New York, 1891). Other early writings of his are Ma'amarei BaMasoret, ib. 1897, and The Classified Psalter (Pesukei dezimra), a Hebrew text with a new translation (1899). He also attempted to translate and explain a modified text of the Shulchan Aruch.
In HaModi'a laHadashim (New York) for 1901, he published, under the title LeDorot Golei Russiya b'America, a sketch of the history of Russo-Jewish emigration to America. His History of the First Russo-American Jewish Congregation appeared in No. 9 of the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, in 1901.
Eisenstein contributed more than 150 entries to the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, from which much of the above biography was based, and he authored thousands of articles in newspapers, journals, encyclopedias, and anthologies.