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Bidding Information
Lot #    9599
Auction End Date    3/22/2005 10:18:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Ha-Meliz (The Advocate)
Title (Hebrew)    המליץ
Author    [Periodical]
City    Peterburg
Publication Date    1890
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    Issues 4-260; 340:252 mm., usual age staining, may be lacking several pp., some chipping. A good copy bound in modern cloth boards.
          
Detailed
Description		    Ha-Meliz (The Advocate), the first Hebrew paper in Russia. Ha-Meliz was founded in Odessa in 1860 by Alexander Zederbaum with the assistance of his son-in-law, A. J. Goldenblum. Zederbaum obtained the license to publish the paper through his connections with the czarist authorities. Ha-Meliz was long the organ of the moderate Haskalah movement in Russia, although at times it served the extreme wing of the Haskalah, publishing the writings of M. L. Lilienblum and J. L. Gordon, advocates of religious reform. In the literary sphere, Ha-Meliz was involved in a bitter controversy concerning A. U. Kovner and his destructive criticism of Hebrew literature (Kovner also sharply criticized Ha-Meliz in his Zeror Perahim, 1868). Appearing in Russia, where censorship was severe, Ha-Meliz defended the czarist regime, but also criticized it surreptitiously. Zederbaum introduced into Ha-Meliz the Hebrew journalistic article with all its virtues and defects and attracted contributors from among the best authors in Russia, such as Mendele Mokher Seforim. After ten years in Odessa, Ha-Meliz was transferred to St. Petersburg (1871) where it appeared until it ceased publication in 1904. As Ha-Meliz was pro-Russian, it advocated Haskalah, Jewish agricultural settlement in Russia, occupation in trades, and improving education while fostering traditional and religious values. Accordingly, it held a reserved attitude toward nationalist and Zionist ideals which were gaining impetus in the early 1880s. Only as Zionism grew stronger, and under the influence of A. S. Friedberg, one of the paper's editorial assistants, did Ha-Meliz become the organ of the Hibbat Zion movement in Russia. In response to the growing interest in Zionism in the 1880s, Ha-Meliz, which had been a weekly, became a semiweekly in 1883 and a daily from 1886, until it ceased publication. For different reasons the paper did not appear for periods of various lengths, from a few months in 1871–72 and in 1879, to a few years, from 1874 to 1877. Ha-Meliz flourished in the 1880s and 1890s, particularly under the editorship of the poet Judah Leib Gordon (1880–83, 1885–88). Promoting Hebrew literature in Russia during the second half of the 19th century, Ha-Meliz published the earliest writings of Ahad Ha-Am, Bialik, and scores of other Hebrew authors and scholars in Russia and abroad. Ha-Meliz also published controversy which, descending to the personal level, bore negative consequences. When Ha-Meliz became the organ of the Hibbat Zion movement in Russia it published the best nationalist-Zionist journalism. For many years Ha-Meliz published various literary collections, introducing writers of all political and religious factions. On Zederbaum's death in 1893, the paper ceased to appear for a few months until it was taken over by Yehudah Leib Rabinovich who served as its last editor.
          
Reference
Description		    EJ
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
19th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Russia-Poland:    Checked
  
Subject
History:    Checked
Other:    Periodical
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    Hebrew, Russian
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica