Jacob ben Wolf Kranz of Dubno (; 1741–1804), the ''Dubner Maggid'' (), was a

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

n (

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 ...

)-born

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who Open-air preaching, preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach com ...

(

maggid A maggid (), also spelled as magid, is a traditional Jewish religious itinerant preacher, skilled as a narrator of Torah and religious stories. A chaplain of the more scholarly sort is called a ''Darshan (Judaism), darshan'' (). The title of ''m ...

). (Alternative spelling of family name: Kranc)

Famous fables and stories

The Dubner Maggid is famous for his

fables Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse (poetry), verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphized, and that ...

parables A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whe ...

designed to teach or illustrate an instructive lessons based on

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

tradition. The most famous fable of the Dubner Maggid is about the way in which he was able to find such fitting fables. When asked about this the Maggid replied: Once I was walking in the forest, and saw tree after tree with a target drawn on it, and at the center of each target an arrow. I then came upon a little boy with a bow in his hand. "Are you the one who shot all these arrows?", I asked. "Yes!" he replied. "Then how did you always hit the center of the target?" I asked. "Simple," said the boy: "First I shoot the arrow, then I draw the target."

History

Kranz was born at

Zietil Dzyatlava or Dyatlovo is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Dzyatlava District. It is located about southeast of Grodno. The population was 7,700 in 2016. As of 2025, it has a population of 7,596. His ...

(

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

זשעטל Zhetl)(now Dzyatlava), (then

now

) in about 1740 and died at

Zamość Zamość (; ; ) is a historical city in southeastern Poland. It is situated in the southern part of Lublin Voivodeship, about from Lublin, from Warsaw. In 2021, the population of Zamość was 62,021. Zamość was founded in 1580 by Jan Zamoyski ...

on 18 December 1804. At the age of eighteen he went to

Międzyrzec Podlaski Międzyrzec Podlaski () is a town in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland, with a population of 17,102 inhabitants . The total area of the town is . Międzyrzec is located in the historic region of Podlachia, near the Krzna river, n ...

(Meseritz), where he served as a preacher. He stayed there for two years, and then became preacher successively at

Zolkiev Zhovkva is a city in Lviv Raion, Lviv Oblast (region) of western Ukraine. Zhovkva hosts the administration of Zhovkva urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Its population is approximately History A village named ''Vynnyky'' was men ...

Dubno Dubno (, ) is a List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality located on the Ikva River in Rivne Oblast (oblast, province) of western Ukraine. It serves as the capital city, administrative center of Dubno Raion ...

Włodawa Włodawa () is a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It is the seat of Włodawa County, situated in the Lublin Voivodeship. it has a population of 13,500. Geography The town lies along the borde ...

(Lublin region), Kalisch, and Zamość. He remained at Dubno eighteen years and is best known for being the Rabbi here. He left Dubno for

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

at the request of the famous

Vilna Gaon Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, ( ''Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman''), also known as the Vilna Gaon ( ''Der Vilner Goen''; ; or Elijah of Vilna, or by his Hebrew acronym Gr"a ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu": "Our great teacher Elijah"; Sialiec, April 23, 172 ...

, who, having recently recovered from a sickness and being unable to study, sought diversion in his conversation. Kranz was considered to be unrivaled preacher. Possessed of great eloquence, he illustrated both his sermons and his homiletic commentaries with parables taken from human life. By such parables he explained the most difficult passages of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Halakha ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Torah, Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is ...

. He was also an eminent rabbinical scholar, and on many occasions was consulted as an authority. Confronted with imposters there were several tests that Kranz would go through to prove he was the true Maggid, opening the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Abraham Bär Flahm with the permission of Kranz's son Yitzhak Kranz who found notes left over by the Maggid in Mezritch where he had preached, and was able to piece together parts of some other books. * "Ohel Ya'aqov", a homiletic commentary on the Pentateuch abounding with graphic parables (i.,

Józefów Józefów () is a town in east-central Poland, located in Masovian Voivodeship, in Otwock County. It lies about southeast of Warsaw city centre and is a part of that city's metropolitan area. Located on a picturesque confluence of Vistula and Ś ...

, 1830; ii., Zolkiev, 1837; iii.,

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, 1863; iv., 1861; v., Vienna, 1859); * "Qol Ya'aqov" (

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, 1819), a similar commentary on the Five Scrolls; * "Kokhab mi-Ya'aqov", a commentary on the "haft'arot"; * "Emet le-Ya'aqov" (Zolkiev, 1836), a commentary on the

Passover Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Biblical Egypt, Egypt. According to the Book of Exodus, God in ...

Haggadah The Haggadah (, "telling"; plural: Haggadot) is a foundational Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. According to Jewish practice, reading the Haggadah at the Seder table fulfills the mitzvah incumbent on every Jew to reco ...

; * "Sefer ha-Middot" (n.p., 1862), ethics arranged in eight "gates" or sections, each section being divided into several chapters. This work resembles very much the "Hobot ha-Levavot" of Bachya. As the author himself had given no name to it, Abraham Bär Flahm, its editor, at first intended to call it "Chobot ha-Lebabot he-Chadash" (The New Duties of the Heart, a reference to an 11th Century famous book); but out of respect for the author, Bachya, he changed his mind. The editor also revised the work, and added to it a preface containing a sketch of Kranz's life, and glosses of his own under the title "Shiyyure ha-Middot". Moses NissenboimAccording to th
first edition cover
(as seen Bidsprit website) the name is Nissenboim, bu
in a later edition
(as seen on

Hebrewbooks A Torah database (מאגר תורני or מאגר יהדות) is a collection of classic Jewish texts in electronic form, the kinds of texts which, especially in Israel, are often called "The Traditional Jewish Bookshelf" (ארון הספרים ה ...

website, the name is listed Nisbaum, usually written in English as Nussbaum with the U vowel pronounced in Galicia as the IPA i (ee). of

Przemyśl Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...

extracted from the author's "Ohel Ya'aqob" some of the parables, added some of funny stories in the Maggid's name and published them in one book entitled "Mishle Ya'aqob" ("The Parables of Jacob"

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, 1886). Following an open letter by Abraham Flahm printed in the popular Hagaddah that year claiming plagiarism and forgery, Nissenboim agreed to print Flahm's preface in the succeeding reprints. The agreement is kept to this day. Several parables never published till modern times, but passed on orally in the family, have been written down by Moshe Kranc, a descendant of the Dubner Maggid, in a book about business and Jewish tales: "The Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management".

Reference Notes

Sources

* Bibliography: Sefer ha-Middot, Preface; * Fuenn, Keneset Yisrael, p. 543; * H. Margaliot, in Ha-Tzefirah, 1902, No. 8.

External links

Beth Hatphutzoth

The North Jerusalem Maggid of Dubno Project

Collection of parables from the Maggid of Dubno

Jew Dubno''Jewish Encyclopedia'': "Jacob ben Wolf Kranz of Dubno (Dubner Maggid)"
by Herman Rosenthal and Max Seligsohn (1906). {{DEFAULTSORT:Kranz, Jacob ben Wolf 1740 births 1804 deaths People from Grodno region Belarusian Jews 18th-century Lithuanian rabbis People from Dzyatlava Maggidim Rabbis from Vilnius