Creator Bio

Daniel Khvolson

1819–1911

Born in Vilna (Vilnius), Daniel Khvolson (Khvol’son) received a traditional Jewish religious education. He moved to Riga and then was invited to complete his studies in Breslau, where he learned German, French, and Russian. Upon converting to Christianity in 1855, he became a professor of Hebrew and Syriac studies at the University of St. Petersburg. His Die Sabier un der Sabismus (1856) not only established his expertise in Semitic studies, but also helped shape Russian-language scholarship in that field. Despite his conversion, he defended Jews against blood libels and helped to win their acquittal in numerous cases.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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Letter on His Conversion

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A few days after receiving your precious letter of 5 November 1854, I began collating [the pages of my book], which took me until New Year’s eve to finish. But what a chasm in between! I began the…

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The Semitic Nations

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With the same character, with which the individual human being is born, with the same he descends into the grave. The kindly disposed does not become ill-disposed, the judicious does not become…
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Literature, 1750–1880

Jewish writing in the period spanning 1750–1880 reflects the profound changes that confronted Jews in modernity. Some writers self-consciously broke with traditional and religious models; others definitely embraced it.

Manuscript page with two columns of writing in Yiddish and Hebrew and a decorated border.
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Life Writing: Biography, Autobiography, and Ego Documents, 1750–1880

The famous and the obscure, women and men, in epitaphs and private letters, ethical wills, cookbooks, and religious reflections, all reflect aspects of Jewish life in a period of great transition.

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Scholarship and Science, 1750–1880

 The scholarly and scientific ethos permeated Jewish intellectual life in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and resulted in contributions obscure and renowned. The foundations of the astonishing breakthroughs of Jews in the sciences in the twentieth century were laid in this period.