LANDAU, MOSES

LANDAU, MOSES (1788–1852), printer, publisher, and lexicographer. Born in Prague, grandson of R. Ezekiel Landau , Moses was imbued with the traditional atmosphere of his rabbinical family. At the same time, he devoted himself to secular studies, especially German literature. He established a Hebrew printing press in Prague, which, for more than two decades, published sacred literature along with some contemporary Hebrew works, including several volumes of the scholarly periodical Kerem Ḥemed . From 1831 until his death he was head of the Prague Jewish community and was instrumental in bringing solomon judah rapoport there to serve as rabbi. From 1849 he served on the Prague municipal council. The best known of his works, He-Arukh u-Musaf he-Arukh im Ma'aneh Lashon (5 vols., 1819–35), is the talmudic dictionary by R. Nathan b. Jehiel with a German translation. Other works are Pitron ha-Millot (Prague, 1827), which deals with the difficult terms found in the Torah; an edition of the Hebrew Bible, with a German translation and a Hebrew commentary on several books (1834–38); a German translation of the maḥzor with a Hebrew commentary; the kinot for the Ninth of Av; the Passover Haggadah; and Marpe Lashon (Odessa, 1865), a collection of the foreign words in Rashi's commentary on the Bible and the Talmud. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kressel, Leksikon, 2 (1967), 290. (Getzel Kressel)