Abraham Jacob Paperna (; 30 August 1840 – 18 February 1919) was a Russian Jewish educator and author.

Early life and education

Abraham Jacob Paperna was born in 1840 in Kapyl,

Minsk Governorate Minsk Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Minsk. It was created from the land acquired in the partitions of Poland and existed from 1793 until 1921. Its territory covered th ...

(today part of

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

). He received a fair education, including the study of the Bible with

Moses Mendelssohn Moses Mendelssohn (6 September 1729 – 4 January 1786) was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the ''Haskalah'', or 'J ...

's translation, Hebrew grammar,

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

, and secular literature. In 1863 he entered the rabbinical school of

Zhitomir Zhytomyr ( ; see #Names, below for other names) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the Capital city, administrative center of Zhytomyr Oblast (Oblast, province), as well as the administrative center of the surrounding ...

, where he studied until 1865; he was then transferred to the rabbinical school of Vilna, from which he graduated in 1867.

Career and later life

In 1868 he was appointed teacher at the government Jewish school at Zakroczym,

Warsaw Governorate Warsaw Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire. It was created in 1844 from the Masovia Governorate, Masovia and Kalisz Governorates, and had the capital in Warsaw. In 1867 ter ...

, and in 1870 he became principal of the government Jewish school of

Płock Płock (pronounced ), officially the Ducal Capital City of Płock, is a city in central Poland, on the Vistula river, in the Masovian Voivodeship. According to the data provided by Central Statistical Office (Poland), GUS on 31 December 2021, the ...

, Suwałki Governorate. He was also instructor in Judaism at the gymnasium in the latter town. Paperna was intimately connected with the Russian

Haskalah The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...

movement in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and contributed various books and articles to Russian as well as to Hebrew literature. His first Hebrew poem, ''Emet ve-Emunah'', appeared in '' Ha-Karmel'' in 1863; Paperna was a steady contributor to that periodical as well as to '' Ha-Melitz''. Critical articles by him, entitled ''Kankan ḥadash male’ yashan'' (in '' Ha-Karmel'', 1867, and printed separately in Vilna), attracted wide attention in the circles of the ''Maskilim''. In these articles Paperna, influenced probably by the Russian critic Dmitry Pisarev, adopted modern realistic methods of criticism. He argued against pseudo-classicism in Hebrew literature, and the "guess-philology" in the commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud. He also ridiculed the presumption of some of the young ''Maskilim'', who from a desire for fame attempted to write books in Hebrew on botany, astronomy, and the other exact sciences, with which they were entirely unfamiliar. An essay on drama entitled ''Ha-Drama bi-khelal veha-‘ivrit bi-ferat'' appeared as a supplement to ''Ha-Melitz'' in 1867. It attracted harsh criticism from Abraham Dob Bär Lebensohn in his pamphlet ''Tokaḥti la-Beḳarim'', written under the pseudonym "S. Friedman" (Paperna had attacked Lebensohn's ''Emet ve-Emunah''), and from Joshua Steinberg (''En Mishpat''). In 1869 Paperna published an article on the

Russification Russification (), Russianisation or Russianization, is a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians adopt Russian culture and Russian language either voluntarily or as a result of a deliberate state policy. Russification was at times ...

of Jews in

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

, entitled ''K yevreiskomu voprosu v Vislyanskom kraye'' ('On the Jewish question in the Vistula Land', in ''Den'', No. 13). Among his articles on education may be mentioned ''O khederakh voobshche'' (Płock, 1884), on the '' chadorim''. Memoirs (''Zikhronot'') by Paperna on the rabbinical school of Zhitomir and its professors appeared in Sokolov's ''Sefer ha-Shanah'' (1900, p. 60).

Publications

* * Originally published in '' Ha-Karmel''. * Originally published in ''Ha-Melitz''. * * A Hebrew grammar in Russian. * * (3d ed., 1884.) Ollendorff's method for the study of the Russian language by Jews. * * (3d ed., 1884.) A Hebrew-Russian letter-writer. * Yiddish version of ''More Sefat Russiya''. * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Paperna, Abraham Jacob 1840 births 1919 deaths People from Kapyl Belarusian Jews Jewish writers People of the Haskalah