Eliahu Mordecai Werbel

Eliahu Mordecai Werbel (Hebrew: אליהו מרדכי ורבל; 1806, Tarnopol - 1880, Odessa) was a Hebrew-language poet, translator, and educator who worked in the Russian Empire.[1]

His daughter Paulina would become Abraham Goldfaden's wife.[2]

Of note is his 1852 romantic poem Faithful Witnesses or a Rat and a Pit (Hebrew: עדים נאמנים או חולדה ובור (subtitled "Romantic poem in four metrical cantos, the parable of the rat and the pit (Talmud Taanith fol. 8, Tosafoth)") based on a Haggadic legend A Rat and a Pit,[1] which allegedly served as an inspiration for Goldfaden's play Shulamith .[3] In some variants of the legend, a lad promised a lass to marry her after rescuing her from a pit. She asked "Who are the witnesses?" A rat was running by, and the lad answered "the rat and the pit". The lad forsake the wow and married another woman. But his two his sons perished: one fell into a pit, and another was bitten by a rat.[4][5]

Another notable work is Siftei Renanot (1864), a collection of poems translated into Hebrew.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Вербель, Илья Мордехай (Маркус)" . Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia (in Russian). 1908–1913.
  2. ^ Alyssa P. Quint, "Pomul Verde", in: Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Cultures Online
  3. ^ Dov Sadan, "The Legend of the Rat and the Pit - Some Material for the Shulamith Polemic" (דב סדן, "לאגדת חולדה ובור - קצת חומר לפולמוס שולמית", מולד טו, תשי"ז-תשי"ח, עמ' 467–468)
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ [2]
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.