The Haskalah Movement in Russia by Jacob S. Raisin
page 57 of 309 (18%)
page 57 of 309 (18%)
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it is once awakened."[29]
For one reason or another we find that some Slavonic Jewish youths preferred other places to Berlin for the pursuit of their studies. Such were Benjamin Wolf Günzberg and Jacob Liboschüts. The former was probably the only Jew at the Göttingen University. It was from there that he inquired of Jacob Emden "whether it was permissible to dissect on the Sabbath," and his thesis for the doctor's degree was _De medica ex Talmudicis illustrata_ (Göttingen, 1743).[30] Liboschüts studied at the University of Halle. After graduation, finding that as a Jew he could not settle in St. Petersburg, he established himself in Vilna, where he became celebrated as a diplomat, philanthropist, and, more especially, expert physician. When Professor Frank was asked who would take care of the public health in his absence, he is reported to have said, _Deus et Judaeus_, "God and the Jew" [Liboschüts]! In their deep-rooted love for learning, they sometimes ventured even beyond the German boundaries, into countries whose language and customs had little in common with theirs. Padua continued to be the resort of Russo-Polish Jews that it had been before 1648. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto found an ardent admirer and zealous propagandist of his principles in the young medical student Jekuthiel Gordon (ab. 1729), who wrote concerning his master to friends in Vienna and Vilna.[31] Judah Halevi Hurwitz (d. 1797), whose work _'Ammude Bet Yehudah_ (Amsterdam, 1765) was highly recommended by Mendelssohn and Wessely, was a graduate of the same famous institution. In addition to his medical and philosophic attainments, he wrote a number of poems, and he was among the first to translate fables from German into Hebrew.[32] The story of Zalkind Hurwitz (1740-1812), "le fameux," as he was called |
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