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Calendar for the years according to the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem years arranged by R. Joseph Judah Leib ben Jehiel Michael Sossnitz. The title page describes it as being for the days of the week, months, Sabbaths and festivals, for every people, for establishing the seasons and cycles of the year, reading the parashot, hoshanahs, Pirkei Avot, and selihot. Also included is a Karaite calendar for twenty years. It coordinates the days of the thee periods until 2018. To know when the molad (exact time of the beginning of the new moon) falls. All of this arranged so that this information can be easily found without great effort. This book fills the place of thousands of expensive calendars. There is a lengthy introduction explaining in detail how the calculations are determined followed by extensive charts.
R. Joseph Judah Leib ben Jehiel Michael Sossnitz was a Russian-American Talmudic scholar, mathematician, and scientific author; born at Birzhi, government of Kovno, Sept. 17, 1837. When he was only ten years old he prepared a calendar for the year 5608 (=1847-48). At the age of nineteen he went to Riga as a teacher of Hebrew, and there made the acquaintance of Professor Novik, who gave him access to the library of the polytechnical school, where he studied German and perfected himself in secular sciences, on which he published articles in Jewish periodicals. In 1875 he was invited to Berlin by H. S. Slonimski to act as coeditor of "Ha-Zefirah," but as he refused to write against Lichtenfeld, Slonimski's antagonist, he was dismissed. In 1888 he settled at Warsaw as editor of the scientific and cabalistic departments of "Ha-Eshkol." He went to New York in 1891, and two years later he founded, in 104th street, a Talmud Torah, of which he was principal until 1897. Since 1899 he has been lecturer on Jewish ethics in the Educational Alliance. R. Sossnitz has written on different treatises of the Talmud, and on astronomy, geometry, physics, etc. His published works are as follows: "Aken Yesh Adonai" (Wilna, 1875), an attack upon modern materialism and particularly upon Büchner's "Kraft und Stoff"; "Ha-Shemesh" (Warsaw, 1878), an essay upon a scientific demonstration of the sun's substance, based on modern investigation and accompanied by astronomical tables; "Sehok ha-Shak" (Wilna, 1880), a manual of chess, based upon A. von Breda's method; "Der Ewige Kalender" (Riga, 1884); "'Iddan 'Olamim" (Warsaw, 1888), a perpetual calendar for Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, with tables for comparison; "Ha-Ma'or" (ib. 1889), an essay on Jewish religious philosophy, containing, besides, notes on Biblical and Talmudical exegesis. |
