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Josef Flesch (Yiddish: יוסף פלעש; 19 September 1781 – 17 December 1839) was Moravian writer, translator, and merchant. He has been called the "father of the Moravian Haskalah."

Biography

Josef Flesch was born in Neu-Rausnitz, Moravia, the son of local rabbi Abraham Flesch. He attended yeshiva in Prague with his father's childhood friend, Baruch Jeitteles. After marrying the daughter of Salomon Berger in Leipnik in 1801 and spending three years in the house of his father-in-law, he returned to his hometown and joined his father's business.

He was a frequent contributor to the Bikkure ha-Ittim, and translated into Hebrew several of the writings of Philo, notably Quis rerum divinarum heres sit (under the title Ha-yoresh divre Elohim, Prague, 1830) and De vita Moysis (under the title Ḥayye Moshe, Prague, 1838). To the former work was added the oration which Flesch delivered at his father's funeral. His other publications include a Hebrew translation of philosopher Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, and a list of Jewish scientists under the title Reshimat anshe mofet (Prague, 1838).

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Kayserling, Meyer (1903). "Flesch, Joseph". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 409.

1. Miller, Michael L. (2021). "Absolutism and Control: Jews in the Bohemian Lands in the Eighteenth Century". In Capkova, Kateřina; Kieval, Hillel J. (eds.). Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-0-8122-5311-5.
2. ^ Miller, Michael L. (2010). Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. pp. 88–91. ISBN 978-0-8047-7652-3.
3. Löw, Leopold (1890). "Abraham and Josef Flesch und ihre Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur neuern Geschichte der Jeschiboth und der judischen Studien". Gesammelte Schriften (in German). 2. Szeged: Verlag von Alexander Bába: 219–249.
4. Miller, Michael L. (2012). "'Your Loving Uncle': Gideon Brecher, Moritz Steinschneider and the Moravian Haskalah". In Leicht, Reimund; Freudenthal, Gad (eds.). Studies on Steinschneider: Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Vol. 33. p. 42. doi:10.1163/9789004226456_003. ISBN 978-90-04-22645-6.
5. Strauss, Ze'ev (2019). "Solomon Judah Rapoport's Maskilic Revival of Philo of Alexandria". In Runia, David T.; Sterling, Gregory E. (eds.). The Studia Philonica Annual. Vol. 31. Atlanta: SBL Press. pp. 204–208. ISBN 978-0-88414-420-5.
6. Zeitlin, William (1890). Bibliotheca hebraica post-Mendelssohniana (in German). Leipzig: K. F. Koehler's Antiquarium. p. 88.
7. Fürst, Julius (1863). Bibliotheca Judaica: Bibliographisches Handbuch der gesammten jüdischen Literatur (in German). Vol. 1. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann. p. 284.
8. Roest, M. (1875). Catalog der Hebraica und Judaica aus der L. Rosenthal'schen Bibliothek (in German). Vol. 1. Amsterdam: J. Clausen. p. 922.

• 1781 births
• 1839 deaths
• Jewish translators
• Latin–Hebrew translators
• People of the Haskalah
• Moravian Jews
• Moravian writers
• People from Rousínov
• Translators from German