Feivel Schiffer
Polish poet and writer (1809–1871)
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Feivel Schiffer (Hebrew: פַיְיבֶל שִׁיפֵער; 1809–1871) was a Polish maskilic poet and writer.
Feivel Schiffer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1809 |
| Died | 1871 (aged 61–62) |
| Writing career | |
| Language | Hebrew |
He was born in Lasezow and raised in the district of Zamość.[1] He lived successively in Josefov, Brody, and Szebrszyn before settling in Warsaw in 1835, where he opened a private school for Jewish children.[2] Schiffer's first major publication was Ḥatzerot ha-Shir, an epic poem on the life of the patriarch Jacob (Warsaw, 1840).[3]
In 1843 he published Matta Leshem, an idyll on agriculture and country life in poetic prose. Schiffer advocated for a transition to agriculture among Polish Jews, and helped settle Jews on land near Zamość with the financial backing of Prince Ivan Paskevich.[2] As an expression of gratitude, Schiffer published Davar Gevorot (Warsaw, 1845), a biography of Paskevich in Hebrew.[4]
He later published Toledot Napoleon, a biography of Napoléon Bonaparte from a pro-Russian point of view, in two parts (Warsaw, 1849 and 1857).[5][6] The work was one of the first books in Hebrew on general history.[7] His final publication was Mehalkhim im Anashim, a translation of Adolph Freiherr Knigge's Umgang mit Menschen (Warsaw, 1866).
