A. B. Rosenshteyn

Born in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, Russian Empire (today in Poland), Abraham Baruch Rosenshteyn received his doctorate in mathematics in Vienna in 1911. That year, he immigrated to Tel Aviv, joining the faculty of the recently formed Herzliya Gymnasium. At that school, Rosenshteyn created lexicons for the study of mathematics and physics in Hebrew, and he worked on twenty-five books over the course of his career. Rosenshteyn’s textbooks had widespread use in Israel through the 1950s, and the mathematical terminology he created is still relevant today. Before his career in mathematic pedagogy, Rosenshteyn wrote Yiddish textbooks that were published in Warsaw. Among these was a multivolume work explaining basic dimensions of belles lettres and poetics for the lay reader, excerpted here; Rosenshteyn produced it in the context of a rapidly expanding Yiddish readership hungry for modern, secular literature. Rosenshteyn died in Tel Aviv.