Keller, Naphtali:

By: Isidore Singer , Max Schloessinger

Austrian scholar; born at Tarnow, Galicia, Jan. 25, 1834; died at Rožnau, Moravia, Aug. 5, 1865; son of Israel Mendel Keller, a well-to-do innkeeper. Naphtali as a mere youth practised speaking Hebrew with his friend M. Weissmann and began to write poems in that language. He also acquired a certain amount of modern culture by means of Hebrew educational literature. After losing in business the marriage portion given him by his father-in-law, he went with his wife and four children to Vienna, and there eked out a toilsome existence as a broker.

In 1864 he published with great care and impartiality the first volume of the Hebrew periodical Bikkurim . In the spring of 1865, on the advice of his physician, he went to Rožnau, a watering-place, to seek relief from an illness which had attacked him in the previous year; but he died there.

Keller was the author of two stories: (1) "Sullam ha-Haẓlaḥah," written in imitation of the "David Barnay" of Julius Rodenberg, and first printed in "Ha-Maggid" (1863), and (2) "Debeḳ lo Ṭob," a tale of Galician Jewish life, which first appeared in "Bikkurim" (1866). These stories were published at Warsaw in 1880 under the collective title "Sippure Naftali."