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First printing of a Hebrew periodical with collected writings, and beginning with a calendar with customs for the entire year of תרכה (October 1864-September 1865). Among the varied contents are articles on the order of learning for the three hundred years prior to the Ramban (Moses ben Nahaman, 1194–1270) by Aaron (Adolph) Jellinek; the Exilarch (head of Babylonian Jewry); reasons for Kiddushin with a ring; the Jewish community in Vienna; and a review of new books.
The editor, Naftali ben Israel Mendel Keller (1834-65), was an Austrian scholar, the son of a well-to-do innkeeper. He was born in Tarnow, Galicia and died at Rožnau, Moravia. At an early age Naftali began practicing speaking Hebrew with his friend M. Weissmann and began to write poems in that language. He also acquired a certain amount of modern culture by means of Hebrew educational literature. After losing in business the marriage portion given him by his father-in-law, he went with his wife and four children to Vienna, eking out a toilsome existence as a broker. In 1864 he published with great care and impartiality the first volume of the Hebrew periodical Bikkurim. In the spring of 1865, on the advice of his physician, he went to Rožnau, a watering-place, to seek relief from an illness which had attacked him in the previous year; but he died there. Keller was the author of two stories: Sullam ha-Hazlahah, written in imitation of the David Barnay of Julius Rodenberg, and first printed in Ha-Maggid (1863), and Debek lo Tov, a tale of Galician Jewish life, which first appeared in Bikkurim (1866). These stories were published at Warsaw in 1880 under the collective title Sippure Naftali (Warsaw, 1880). |
