HERSCHBERG, ABRAHAM SAMUEL

HERSCHBERG, ABRAHAM SAMUEL (1858–1943), Hebrew scholar and writer. Herschberg, who was born in Kolno, near Lomza, Poland, became a textile manufacturer in Bialystok. There he was associated with S. Mohilever in the Ḥibbat Zion movement. In 1899–1900 he went to Ereẓ Israel with the intention of settling there. He described his impressions in Mishpat ha-Yishuv he-Ḥadash be-Ereẓ Yisrael (1901), in which he criticized Rothschild's officials, and in "Be-Ereẓ ha-Mizraḥ" (in Ha-Zeman, 1910). Herschberg also wrote articles about the state of the country's trade and commerce (in Ha-Ẓefirah, 1903–04); sketches on the early Ḥovevei Zion (in Sokolow's Ha-Me'assef, 1903); brochures on the development of modern Hebrew (1909) and on the Sephardim in Ereẓ Israel (Ha-Shilo'aḥ, 1911); studies of socio-economic life in the talmudic period, including Ḥayyei ha-Tarbut be-Yisrael (1924); articles on proselytism and the unity of race and religion among Jews (Ha-Tekufah, 12–13, 1922); and a two-volume history of Bialystok Jewry, Pinkas Bialystok (Yiddish, 1949–50). He translated into Hebrew R. Kittel's Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (1911) and J. Eschelbacher's Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums (1912). From 1913 to 1914 he edited the Yiddish daily Bialistoker. He was murdered by the Nazis in the Bialystok ghetto.

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1929), 880–2; I. Heilperin, in: Tekufatenu, 3–4 (1933), 499–501; idem, in: Pinkes Bialystok, 1 (1949), xxv–xxx; H. Herschberg, ibid., xxi–xxiv.