Israel Frenkel
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Israel Frenkel (Hebrew: ישראל פרענקעל; 18 September 1853 – 1890) was a Polish-Jewish Hebraist, translator, and educator.
Biography
Frenkel was born in Radom, Poland in 1853. His mother, Neḥama née Potashnik, was a descendant of Yaakov Yitzḥak of Lublin, and his father, Shraga Frenkel, came from a scholarly Hasidic family.[1]
He studied Talmudic literature under Rabbi Samuel Mohilever, at the same time studying Hebrew, German, and French. An early member of the Hibbat Zion movement,[2] Frenkel became close friends with Mohilever, as well as with Haim Yehiel Bornstein and Nahum Sokolow.[1] he founded a Talmud Torah in Radom in 1882, which emphasized the study of both Judaic and secular subjects.[3]
His translations into Hebrew include Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's drama Miss Sara Sampson, under the title Sara bat Shimshon (Warsaw, 1887); the songs in metric verse in David Radner's translation of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (Vilna, 1878); and Stanisław Gabriel Kozłowski's drama Esterka, under the title Masʾa Ester (Warsaw, 1889), the heroine of which is Esterka, the mythical Jewish mistress of Casimir III the Great.[4][5] Frenkel was also regular contributor to Ha-Tsfira, Ha-Shaḥar, Ha-Melitz, Ha-Maggid, and other Maskilic publications.[3][6]
He died at age 37 during the 1889–1890 flu pandemic.[1] His son Yechiel Frenkel would become a prominent writer and Zionist activist.[6]
Partial bibliography
- Kozłowski, Stanisław Gabriel (1889). "Masʾa Ester: ḥizayon be-shesh maʿarkhot yesodoto be-divrei ha-yamim me-et ha-sofer ha-polani Kozlovski" [Esther’s Burden: A spectacle in six acts, based on the history by the Polish writer Kozłowski]. Ha-Asif (in Hebrew). 5. Translated by Frenkel, Israel: 1–108.
- Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1887). Sara bat Shimshon [Miss Sara Sampson]. Translated by Frenkel, Israel. Warsaw.
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