Mark Osipovich Nemzer was a graduate and instructor of the Vilna (Vilnius) Rabbinical seminary, government rabbi of Vilna, and teacher at the women’s gymnasium in Vilna. In 1880, Nemzer published a textbook on Jewish history in Russian, called ‘History of…
Menahem Amelander (1698-bef.1749)
In 1743 the well-known Amsterdam Jewish printer Naphtali Herz Rofe and his son-in-law Kosman ben Joseph Baruch published two related titles: first, a new Yiddish edition of the medieval history book Sefer Yosippon; second, a completely new title, also in…
Jacques Basnage (1653-1723)
One of the most prolific authors in the Huguenot diaspora following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was Jacques Basnage de Beauval (1653-1723). While serving as a pastor to the Walloon Reformed Churches in Rotterdam and The…
Josephus and Jewish Orthodoxy
The approach to Josephus in modern Jewish orthodoxy has not been monolithic, and there were two main strands. Early commentators had frequently cited the Book of Yosippon, which they identified with the works of Josephus, and thus, from the viewpoint…
Ze’ev Jawitz (1847-1924)
Ze’ev Jawitz was an Orthodox-nationalist historian who published a 14-volume series of books, Toldot Yisrael, that surveys the history of the people of Israel from the time of the patriarchs until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The first…
Isaac Halevy (1847-1914)
Rabbi Isaac Halevy Rabinovitz presented the most comprehensive, profound, and significant Orthodox response to the Wissenschaft des Judentums school of historiography. He was born in Ivyanets, near Vilna (now Belarus), and received an Orthodox Yeshiva education, including studies in the…
Lessing’s Biography of Josephus (1802)
Dr Lessing was a Jewish intellectual, probably from Prague, and otherwise unknown to us, who in 1802 published the first modern biography of Josephus written by a Jew. The second and fourth issues of the short-lived Prague periodical Jüdisch-deutsche Monatschrift…
Gitai’s Film ‘The War of the Sons’ (2009)
The film La guerre des fils de lumière contre les fils des ténèbres (The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness) is a recording of a stage production by the renowned Israeli-French filmmaker Amos Gitai (born…
Robert Eisler (1882-1949)
Robert Eisler, born in Vienna, was a Jewish scholar of ancient history, cosmology, myth, and economics. Trained at Vienna and Rome, Eisler served as head of the League of Nations’ Committee of Intellectual Cooperation in Paris between 1925-1931, and taught…
Micha Josef Berdyczewski (bin Gorion) (1865-1921)
Hebrew novelist, essayist, scholar, and thinker Micha Josef Berdyczewski was a life-long admirer of Josephus. An autobiographical short story, Be-Derech Rehokah (On a Long and Winding Road), describes Micha Josef’s first encounter with Sefer Yosippon (Book of Yosippon) as a…
Emanuel bin Gorion (1903-1987)
Emanuel bin Gorion was a literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Son of the Hebrew novelist Micha Josef Berdyczewski (who later took on the name bin Gorion), bin Gorion inherited his father’s enthusiasm for Josephus’s legacy and for Josephus as a…
Josephus and Masada Tourism
The Yigael Yadin Masada Museum was opened in 2007 at the foot of the mountain. Josephus is the axis of the tour. He is shown in three dimensions, seated in this garden in Rome and presented as the author of…
Models of the Temple at Jerusalem
Josephus’s descriptions have figured largely in twentieth-century attempts to reconstruct the Temple Mount in model form. They have been set beside both the archaeological findings and tannaitic rabbinic sources (primarily the mishnaic tractates Yoma and Tamid), from which they differ…
Jacob Naftali Hertz Simchoni (1884-1926)
Jacob Naftali Hertz Simchoni (Simchowitz) was an Eastern European Jewish scholar, translator, and educator. He was born in 1884 into a Maskilic family in Slutsk (in present-day Belarus), where he spent his childhood. As a teenager he studied Latin and…
Josephus on Stage in New York (1933)
In November 1933, the Yiddish Art Theater of New York staged Josephus, a dramatic adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s Josephus (Der jüdische Krieg). This two-act, 22-scene play was scripted and directed by Maurice Schwartz, who also acted the lead role of…