Joseph Perl

Born in Tarnopol, Galicia, Joseph (Yosef) Perl was a satiric writer, educator, and proponent of the Haskalah. At first he was a follower of Hasidism, to the displeasure of his father, a wine and meat-tax merchant, who made him a partner in his business for a time. Perl later turned against Hasidism, and criticized it, including some of its leading figures, while remaining a follower of the teachings of the Vilna Gaon. In 1813, Perl founded a Jewish school in Tarnopol in the spirit of the Enlightenment. In response to the Austrian censorship of a German-language anti-Hasidic work, Über das Wesen der sekte Chassidim, which he wrote in 1814–1816, Perl wrote what some consider to be the first Hebrew novel, Megaleh temirin (1819), under the pseudonym Ovadiah ben Petaḥyah. There he satirized Hasidism, as the book pretended to be a collection of letters between Hasidic rebbes. He also composed a number of manuscripts in Yiddish.