Rumsch, Isaac Moses

Russian teacher and Hebrew author; born in the village of Zezemer, government of Wilna, April 6, 1822; died in 1894. At the age of nine he went to Wilna, where he studied the Talmud in the yeshibah of his brother Joseph Rumsch, and then in that of R. Mordecai Melzer. Subsequently he studied the Bible and Hebrew grammar secretly and acquired a knowledge of German and other secular subjects; but his plan of going to Germany to obtain a scientific education was frustrated by the persecutions to which he was subjected by his relatives because of his love for study. When in 1853 the Russian government opened public schools for Jewish children in the government of Wilna, he, together with his friend Judah Löb Gordon, was appointed a teacher in the school of Ponevyezh.

Rumsch was the author of the following works: "Kur 'Oni" (Wilna, 1861; printed at the expense of the Russian government), a free Hebrew translation of "Robinson Crusoe" from the German of Rauch; "Ḳin'at Sifre Ḳodesh" (ib. 1873), critical glosses on L. Mandelstamm's Russian translation of the Psalms, together with notes on some of them; "Shillumat Resha'im," a story of Jewish life, and "Ḥatikat Bad" a Hebrew novel (ib. 1875); "Megillat Ester ha-Sheniyah" (ib. 1883), a historical novel of Esther or Esterka, the favorite of the Polish king Casimir the Great, in Hebrew based on the German; and "Bat-Ḥayil," a historical novel of Jewish life in Spain in the fourteenth century, freely translated from Philippson and published in "Ha-Asif," 1889, v. 1-47. He contributed also many articles to "Ha-Karmel" and "Ha-Meliẓ" and left in manuscript some Hebrew stories and notes on the Bible.

Bibliography:

  * Sokolow, Sefer Zikkaron, s.v., Warsaw, 1890;
  * Zeitlin, Bibl. Post-Mendels. p. 324.



H. R. J. Z. L.