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Dr. Joseph Perles, German rabbi; born at Baja, Hungary, Nov. 26, 1835; died at Munich March 4, 1894. Having received his early instruction in the Talmud from his father, Baruch Asher Perles, he was educated successively at the gymnasium of his native city, the rabbinical seminary at Breslau, and the university of that city (Oriental philology and philosophy; Ph.D. 1859, presenting as his dissertation "Meletemata Peschitthoniana").
Perles was awarded his rabbinical diploma in 1862. He had already received a call, in the autumn of the previous year, as preacher to the community of Posen; and in that city he founded a religious school. In 1863 he married Rosalie, the eldest daughter of Simon Baruch Schefftel. In the same year he declined a call to Budapest; but in 1871 he accepted the rabbinate of Munich, being the first rabbi of modern training to fill that office. As the registration law which had restricted the expansion of the communities had not been abrogated until 1861, Perles found an undeveloped community; but under his management it soon began to flourish, andin 1887 he dedicated the new synagogue. He declined not only a call to succeed Geiger as rabbi in Berlin, but also a chair at the newly founded seminary in Budapest.
Of Perles' works the following (given in order of publication) deserve special notice: Ueber den Geist des Commentars des R. Moses b. Nachman zum Pentateuch und über Sein Verhältniss zum Pentateuch-Commentar Raschi's, in "Monatsschrift," 1858 (with supplementary notes, ib. 1860); Die Jüdische Hochzeit in Nachbiblischer Zeit, Leipsic, 1860; Die Leichenfeierlichkeiten im Nachbiblischen Judentum, Breslau, 1861 (both of the foregoing in English in "Hebrew Characteristics," New York, 1875); R. Salomo b. Abraham b. Adereth: Sein Leben und Seine Schriften, Breslau, 1863; Gesch. der Juden in Posen, Breslau, 1865; David Cohen de Lara's Rabbinisches Lexicon Keter Kehunnah, Breslau, 1868; Etymologische Studien zur Kunde der Rabbinischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde, Breslau, 1871; Zur Rabbinischen Sprach- und Sagenkunde, Breslau, 1873 (contains material on the Hebrew sources of the "Arabian Nights," in addition to many new definitions of words); Thron und Circus des Königs Salomo, Breslau, 1873; Die in einer Münchener Handschrift Aufgefundene Erste Lateinische Uebersetzung des Maimonidischen Führers, Breslau, 1875; Das Buch Arugat Habosem des Abraham b. Asriel, Krotoschin, 1877; Eine Neuerschlossene Quelie über Uriel Acosta, Krotoschin, 1877; Kalonymos b. Kalonymos' Sendschreiben an Joseph Kaspi, Munich, 1879; Beiträge zur Geschichte der Hebräischen und Aramäischen Studien, 1884; Die Berner Handschrift des Kleinen Aruch, in "Grätz Jubelschrift," Breslau, 1887; Beiträge zur Rabbinischen Sprach- und Altertumskunde, Breslau, 1893; Further, he contributed to the "Revue des Etudes Juives" and other periodicals, and edited the "Bi'ure Onḳelos" of S. B. Schefftel (1888). A selection of his sermons was edited by his wife in 1896.
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