Mulder, Samuel Israel
MULDER, SAMUEL ISRAEL
MULDER, SAMUEL ISRAEL (1792–1862), educator and Hebrew author, born in Amsterdam. He was a pupil of David *Friedrichsfeld and under his influence became one of the pillars of the Dutch Haskalah. As a youth he signed himself "Salomon" or "Schrijver," receiving the surname Mulder only in 1811. In 1818 he became an official court translator, and in 1826 was appointed principal of the Nederlands Israëlietisch Seminarium, the seminary for rabbis and teachers in Amsterdam. From 1835 he served as the superintendent of all Jewish religious schools in Holland, and from 1849 was secretary of the Amsterdam community.
Mulder's scholarly and literary work qualifies him as the Dutch equivalent of a late 18th-century Berlin maskil, his oeuvre showing many parallels with that of Joel *Loewe (Joel Brikl). Mulder made his name as a linguist, compiling, inter alia, an abridgement of Loewe's 1794 Ammudei ha-Lashon and a Hebrew-Dutch dictionary (1831; with M. *Lemans), and as a translator of the core texts of the Jewish liturgy. He translated large parts of the Bible (1827–38), the Passover Haggadah (1837), Keter Malkhut (1850), and Sefer ha-Ḥayyim (1851). He also published a Dutch Bible for Jewish youth in 17 parts (1850–55). In 1815 he had founded, together with Mozes Loon-stein, the Hebrew literary society Tongeleth. Simultaneously, Mulder's work appears mildly influenced by the early German Wissenschaft des Judentums. He was the author of several historical overviews, ranging from ancient history to Dutch literature. As early as 1826 he published a (liberal) abridged translation of Zunz's groundbreaking study of Rashi (1822). Part of Mulder's Dutch compositions were collected in Verspreide Lettervruchten (1844).
bibliography:
H.N. Shapira, Toledot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ha-Hadashah, 1 (1940), 555–64; E.B. Asscher, Levensschets van Samuel Israël Mulder (1863); H. Boas, in: Amstelodamum, 52 (1965), 126–35; I. Maarsen, Tongeleth (1925). add. bibliography: F.J. Hoogewoud, in: Studia Rosenthaliana 14 (1980), 129–44.
[Yehuda Arye Klausner /
Irene E. Zwiep (2nd ed.)]