SILBERSTEIN, DAVID JUDAH LEIB

SILBERSTEIN, DAVID JUDAH LEIB (d. 1884), Hungarian rabbi. Silberstein was born in Bonyhad and studied under Meir Ash in Ungvar (Uzhorod). He served in several communities: Ujhely (Satoraljaujhely), Senta (Vojvodina), and Vacz near Budapest. He also lived in Jerusalem for eight years between 1859 and 1867. He was the author of the Shevilei David (1863), on the Pentateuch, and four volumes with the same name (1862–1880) on the four sections of the Shulḥan Arukh. He was in communication with the outstanding contemporary Hungarian scholars, among others, Moses Schick, Abraham Judah ha-Kohen Schwartz, Menahem Mendel Baneth, and Amram Blum. He died in Vacz. His son ISAIAH (1857–1930) was two years old when his father went to Jerusalem, and he returned with him to Hungary. At first he was a cloth merchant but in 1884 became rabbi of Vacz. He was the author of Ma'asai le-Melekh (2 vols., 1913–30), on the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides. He was a critic for the literary periodical Tel-Talpiyyot issued in Vacz under the editorship of David Ẓevi Katzburg, in which, in 1904, he expressed his opposition to Zionism and the Mizrachi, although at the same time he supported the old yishuv in Jerusalem. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ON DAVID JUDAH LEIB: P.Z. Schwartz, Shem ha-Gedolim me-Ereẓ Hagar, 1 (1913), 26a:50; A. Stern, Meliẓei Esh al Ḥodesh Sivan (19622), 147:185; Magyar Rabbik, 3 (1906), 6f. ON ISAIAH: N. Ben-Menahem, Mi-Sifrut Yisrael be-Ungaryah (1958), 65f.; Turei Yeshurun, 3:14 (1971). (Naphtali Ben-Menahem)