Hirsch Edelmann

Born in Swislocz, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), he was the son of a rabbinical scholar, and received a good Talmudical education, which he later supplemented by acquainting himself thoroughly with ancient and modern Hebrew literature.

Five years later he published "'Alim le-Mibḥan," specimens or extracts from his work on difficult passages of the Haggadah in the Talmudim and Midrashim, with an appendix, "Megillat Sefer," on Purim and the Megillah, Danzig, 1844.

Edelmann spent about ten years in England, and was one of the first competent scholars to examine the manuscripts and rare printed books of the Oppenheim collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and to give the outside world some knowledge of their contents.

In this work he was assisted by Leopold Dukes; and they jointly edited and published "Ginze Oxford" (with an English translation by Marcus Heymann Breslau, London, 1851).

To this period of Edelmann's activity belong also: Edelmann also brought out a valuable critical new edition of Ishtori Haparchi's "Kaftor u-Feraḥ," Berlin, 1851,[1] and wrote "Gedullat Sha'ul," a biography of Rabbi Saul Wahl, the alleged one-day King of Poland, with an appendix, "Nir le-Dawid ule-Zar'o," the genealogy of Denis M. Samuel of London, a descendant of that rabbi, London, 1854.