Jacob Eichenbaum

Jacob Eichenbaum (October 12, 1796, Krasnopolie – December 27, 1861, Kiev), born Jacob Gelber, was a Galician-Jewish maskil, educator, poet and mathematician.

Jacob Eichenbaum

Biography

First married at the age of 11, Eichenbaum soon divorced when his father-in-law suspected him of secular leanings.[1] He married again in 1815 and settled in Zamość, adopting the name Eichenbaum in order to obtain a resident's permit. There he encountered a circle of progressive Jewish youths who were followers of the "Berlin culture," and began studying Hebrew, German, philosophy, and (in particular) mathematics.[2] In 1819 he translated Euclid's Elements from German into Hebrew.

He worked as a private tutor, travelling between different towns of southern Russia, teaching Hebrew subjects and mathematics in the houses of wealthy people. In 1835 at Odessa (then the educational centre of the south-Russian Jews), Eichenbaum opened a private school for Jewish children. In 1836 he published Kol Zimrah, one of the first books of Hebrew poetry published in the Haskalah period. In 1840 he published Ha-Kerav, a book in verse describing the moves in the game of chess.

In the course of a few years the pedagogic and literary labors of Eichenbaum attracted the attention of the Russian government, which in 1844 appointed him overseer of the Jewish school in Kishinev, and in 1850 chief inspector of the new rabbinical school opened by the Russian government in Zhitomir. He retained this position until his death.[1]

In the later years of his life he published a textbook of arithmetic in Hebrew, Ḥokmat ha-Shi'urim, (1857), and an allegorical poem, "Ha-Kosem," in Ha-Meliẓ (1861).

References

1. "Eichenbaum (Gelber), Jacob". Encyclopaedia Judaica.
2.  Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Eichenbaum, Jacob". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.