Abraham Ḥayim Braatbard

Abraham ḥayim ben Zvi Hirsch Braatbard was born in Amsterdam. Nothing is known about his education or background besides the fact that he worked as a typesetter in a few Hebrew print houses. Braatbard’s work, titled Ayn naye kornayk (A New Chronicle) was written in Yiddish. It covers the years 1740 to 1752, which he saw as an exceptional time. It deals mostly with Dutch politics, often from a Jewish perspective, and ends with the inauguration of the “New Synagogue” (Naye shul) in 1652. The work remained in manuscript and was only discovered after World War II.