Simhah Pinsker

Simhah Pinsker (Hebrew: שמחה פינסקר, March 17, 1801 – October 29, 1864) was a Polish-Jewish scholar and archeologist born in Tarnopol, Habsburg West Galicia (now Ternopil, Ukraine).

He received his early Hebrew education in a cheder and from his father, Shebaḥ ha-Levi, a noted preacher, who instructed him in mathematics and German language also.

Here, in conjunction with Isaac Horowitz of Brody and Littenfeld, Pinsker succeeded in establishing a public school for Jewish children, of which he himself served as principal until 1840.

The Liqquṭe Qadmoniyyot made such an impression upon the scholarly world that Isaak Markus Jost and Heinrich Graetz publicly avowed their indebtedness to the author, the former even changing, in consequence, some of the views expressed in his history of the Jewish sects.

The other great work of Pinsker, published in his lifetime, was Mabo el ha-Niḳḳud ha-Ashshuri weha-Babli (Vienna, 1863), an introduction to the Babylonian-Hebraic system of punctuation; it contains the results of his examination of the manuscripts in the Odessa library.