MEIR BEN SAMUEL OF SHCHERBRESHIN

MEIR BEN SAMUEL OF SHCHERBRESHIN (Pol. Szczebrzeszyn ; mid-17^th century), paytan and chronicler who lived in a small town near Lublin, Poland. His known writings consist of Shir Mizmor le-Yom ha-Shabbat ("Psalm for the Sabbath," Venice, 1639) and a rhymed account in Hebrew of the *Chmielnicki persecutions of 1648–49, written during the summer of 1650, and which is to be read "at all times, but especially during the three weeks of mourning between the 17^th of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av and on the 20^th of Sivan," the latter being the fast day in commemoration of the persecutions. The work was published during the same summer in Cracow, under the title Ẓok ha-Ittim ("Sufferings of the Times"). In the spirit of the accounts of the sufferings during the First *Crusade (1096), the author describes the persecutions of his own day as related to him by fugitives and, in part, as he witnessed them himself in Zamosc and the surrounding region in the summer of 1649. Ẓok ha-Ittim is of greater historical importance than the other Jewish chronicles of these persecutions, which were mostly written and published some time after the events by refugees in distant places who could not, for various reasons, give all the details.

bibliography:

H.Y. Gurland, Le-Korot ha-Gezerot al Yisrael, 4 (1889–90), 7–61; Halpern, in: Zion, 25 (1960), 17–56. add. bibliography: Gezerot Taḥ ve-Tat: Yeven Meẓulah: Ẓok ha-Itim: Megilat Efah: Seliḥah le-ha-Tosefot Yom Tov (repr. 2004).

[Israel Halpern]