PSANTIR, JACOB

PSANTIR, JACOB (1820–1902), historian of Romanian Jewry. Born in Botosani, Romania, Psantir was orphaned in childhood and received no formal education apart from a few years in a Jassy talmud torah. He earned a meager living in a variety of occupations, including that of singer in a gypsy band. In this way he traveled throughout Romania and several other Balkan countries, and his great desire for knowledge coupled with an acute sense of observation enabled him to fill the gaps in his education. In his wanderings Psantir learned about the life of Jewish communities at first hand, investigating their history, their organization, their means of livelihood, and their relations with their non-Jewish neighbors. He supplemented his findings from communal and municipal archives and by deciphering inscriptions on gravestones. The results of his research are contained in two books written in Hebrew, Divrei ha-Yamim le-Arẓot Rumanyah ("Chronicles of the Lands of Romania," 1871) and Korot ha-Yehudim be-Rumenyen ("History of the Jews in Romania," 1873), and the Yiddish Sefer Zikhroynes ("Memoirs," 1875).

Although Psantir's work lacks any scientific discipline, being the product of a self-taught writer whose imagination exceeds his critical faculty, it has important historical value because the sources completely disappeared after the Nazi Holocaust.

bibliography:

M.A. Halevi, in: yivoa, 7 (1952), 204–11.

[Isac Beercovici]