Heinrich Graetz devoted the third volume of his eleven-volume, comprehensive Geschichte der Juden to the period from the death of Judas Maccabaeus in 160 BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, a period in which he…
Moritz Horschetzky (1788-1859)
A Jewish doctor, amateur historian, and philologist from the Bohemian town Nový Bydžov (Neubidschow). He married into the most important family in Nagy Kanisza / Groß Kanischa (Hungary), the Lackenbachers; subsequently he played an active role in this community, served…
Peter Beer (1758-1838)
Peter Beer was a teacher, textbook writer, and historian from the Bohemian town Nový Bydžov (Neubidschow). Beer belonged to the first cohort of Habsburg Jews to enroll in a teachers’ seminar in the 1780s and thereafter held teaching positions in…
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…
Judith Montefiore (1784-1862)
In 1827, Judith and Moses Montefiore visited the Holy Land for the first time. In her travel journal, privately published in 1836 as a gift to her husband, Judith draws explicitly on Josephus in her reflections on Jerusalem. She refers…
Grace Aguilar (1816-1847)
Grace Aguilar was a prolific Anglo-Jewish author who wrote romantic and domestic novels, short stories, poems, essays, histories, and works of instruction. Often choosing themes from Jewish history and religion, she sought to dignify Judaism and to push back Christian…