Avrom Ber Gotlober

Author

1811 – 1899

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Who was Avrom Ber Gotlober?

Avrom Ber Gotlober was a Jewish writer, poet, playwright, historian, journalist and educator. He mostly wrote in Hebrew, but also wrote poetry and dramas in Yiddish. His first collection was published in 1835.

Gotlober's last name is often transliterated as Gottlober. He was widely known by his initials, ABG, which in Hebrew and Yiddish are the first three letters, alef-bet-giml.

ABG was a maskil, a leader in the haskalah, the nineteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment in Russia and Eastern Europe. While his literary output is no longer widely known, he was important for several reasons:

As a teacher in the state-sponsored schools for Jews, where he taught and influenced two founders of Yiddish literature: Mendele Mocher Sforim, whom Sholom Aleichem called "the zeyde of us all", and Abraham Goldfaden, the founder of the professional Yiddish theater.

As a historian who wrote histories of the Karaites and of the Hasidism and Kabbalah that are still cited by scholars.

As a social observer and memoirist, who had the fortune to live long enough to describe the social and political conditions of the 1820s and 1830s for audiences of the 1880s. Scholars widely cite his memoirs, his contribution to Sholom Aleichem's Yudishe Folks-Bibliothek, and his articles in his own periodical Ha-Boker Or and in other periodicals.

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Born
Jan 14, 1811
Volhynia
Profession
Died
Apr 12, 1899

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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