FERNHOF, ISAAC

FERNHOF, ISAAC (1868–1919), Hebrew author, editor, and poet. Born in Buchach, Galicia, he was a teacher all his life, first in his native town, then in Zlochow, and finally in Stanislav. During World War i he went to Bohemia, where he taught Galician refugee children. In 1918 he returned to Stanislav, then under Ukrainian rule, and suffered dire poverty and famine. He died there soon after. Fernhof began writing poetry and articles in the late 1880s, and later published Sifrei Sha'ashu'im (1896–99), a small literary periodical to which leading writers such as Tchernichowsky, Peretz, Brainin, Klausner, and others contributed. Subsequently he tried unsuccessfully to publish literary journals (Ha-Ẓa'ir, Ha-Yarden). A book of his stories, Me-Aggadot ha-Ḥayyim, appeared in 1908. He left a series of stories depicting Mitnaggedim which were published long after his death as Sefer ha-Mitnaggedim (ed. Israel Cohen, 1952). This includes an article published after the appearance of Herzl's Jewish State in which Fernhof prophetically refers to the utopian state by the name of "Israel."

bibliography:

R. Fahn, in: Ba-Derekh (March 9, 1934); idem, in: Haolam, 32 (1939), 394–5; Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael – Sefer Stanislav (1952), 182, and index of names; M. Henish, Mi-Bayitu-mi-Ḥuẓ (1961), 263–5; Rabbi Binyamin, Mishpeḥot Soferim (1960), 136–8; Sefer Buczacz (1957), 122–31; I. Cohen, Sha'ar Soferim (1962), 397–403.

[Getzel Kressel]