Trebitsch, Abraham

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TREBITSCH, ABRAHAM

TREBITSCH, ABRAHAM (Reuven Hayyat ; b. 1760), Moravian historical author. Born in Trebic, he attended a Prague yeshivah c. 1775, and later in *Mikulov was secretary of the Moravian *Landesrabbiner. His history, Korot ha-Ittim (Bruenn, 1801), contains "tales of all the wars from 1741 to 1801 which were waged in the countries of Austria, Prussia, France, and England and all that Jews went through in those days." Intended as a continuation of Menahem *Amelander's She'erit Yisrael (Amsterdam, 1743), it differs from it by covering non-Jewish as well as Jewish history. It was published simultaneously in Yiddish as Tsaytgeshikhte. The work is important mainly for its traditionalist evaluation of the reforms of *Joseph ii. In 1851 Jacob *Bodek published a revised edition entitled Korot Nosafot, and there also exists an edition apparently plagiarized by Bodek's brother-in-law. Along with Hirsch Menaker, Trebitsch wrote Ru'aḥ Ḥayyim, an account of the exorcism of a *dibbuk in Mikulov (Vienna, 1785; Yid. (same title), Bruenn, 1785; repr. in several editions of Moshe Graf 's Zera Kodesh).

bibliography:

R. Kestenberg-Gladstein, Die neuere Geschichte der Juden in den boehmischen Laendern, 1 (1969), index; I. Halpern, in: ks, 29 (1953/54), 174–5.

[Meir Lamed]

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