Werbel, Eliahu Mordecai
WERBEL, ELIAHU MORDECAI
WERBEL, ELIAHU MORDECAI (1806–1880), Hebrew author. Werbel was born in Ternopol, East Galicia, and educated at the secular Jewish school established by Joseph *Perl. From 1839 he taught at a similar school in Odessa founded by Bezalel Stern, until the school's closure by government order in 1874. He wrote a long literary poem Edim Ne'emanim o Ḥuldah u-Vor ("Faithful Witnesses or a Weasel and a Hole," 1852).
The poem's theme is borrowed from an ancient legend, mentioned in the Talmud and elaborated upon in the Arukh, of a weasel and a hole who avenge the disloyalty of a man to a young lady whom he had promised to marry. The poem is written in the euphuistic style of the period and was the source for the play Shulamit (1886), by Abraham Goldfaden (son-in-law of Werbel) and for poems by many other authors. Werbel contributed regularly to the monthly Ha-Boker Or, in which his Tokhen Alilah, four literary poems on the blood libel, appeared in 1881. His Hebrew translations of poetry and prose were collected in his book Siftei Renanot (1864). He also completed the Hebrew translation of Lessing's Nathan der Weise begun by Abraham Ber Gottlober (1874). Unlike many of his contemporaries he neither criticizes nor satirizes the older generation.
bibliography:
F. Lachower, Toledot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ha-Haḥadashah, 2 (1963), 168–70; G. Bader, Medinah va-Ḥakhameha (1934), 93–94.
[G.El.]