Bacher, Wilhelm
BACHER, baH´er, WILHELM: Hungarian Jewish
Orientalist; b. at Liptó-Szent-Mikós
(65 m. s.w. of Cracow), Hungary, Jan. 12, 1850. He was educated at the Evangelical
Lyceum of Pressburg, and the universities of Budapest, Breslau, and Leipsic (Ph.D.,
1870). He was graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau as rabbi
in 1876 and was appointed to the rabbinate of Szegedin. In the following year, however,
the Hungarian government chose him to be one of the professors of the new Landesrabbinerschule
at Budapest, where he has since taught on a great variety of subjects. In 1878
he was a field-chaplain in the Austro-Hungarian army of occupation in Bosnia. Seven
years later he was appointed director of the Talmud Torah school in Budapest, an
institution with which he is still connected. In 1894 he was one of the founders
of the Jewish literary society Izraelita Magyar Jrodami Társulat, of which
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he was elected vice-president four years later. His
chief works, in addition to numerous contributions
to scientific periodicals and various encyclopedias,
are
Nizâmi’s Leben und Werke, und der zweite Theil
des Nizâmi’schen Alexanderbuches (Leipsic, 1871);
Muslicheddin Sa’adî’s Aphorismen and Sinngedichte,
zum ersten Male herausgegeben and übersetzt
(Strasburg, 1879);
Die Agada der babylonischen Amoräer (1878);
Die Agada der Tannaïten (2 vols., 1884-90);
Leben and Werke des Abulwalîd Merwân ibn Ganāh
und die Quellen seiner Schrifterklärung (1885);
Die Agada der palästinischen Amoräer (3 vols., 1892-99);
Die hebräische Sprachwissenschaft vom zehnten bis
zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert (Treves, 1892);
Die Bibelexegese der jüdischen Religionsphilosophen des Mittelalters vor Maimûni (Strasburg, 1892);
Die Anfänge der hebräischen Grammatik (1895);
Die Bibelexegese Maimûni’s (1896);
Die älteste Terminologie der jüdischen Schriftauslegung
(2 vols., 1899-1905);
Ein hebräisch-persisches Wörterbuch aus dem vierzehnten Jahrhundert (1900); and
Aus dem Wörterbuch Tanchum Jeruschalmi’s (1903).
In 1884 he and Joseph Bánóczi founded the
Magyar Zsidó Szemle, which they edited for seven years,
and which is still the only Jewish review in Hungary.