BERGEL, JOSEPH

BERGEL, JOSEPH (1802–1884), physician, poet, and author. Bergel, who was born in Moravia, was a practicing physician, publishing papers in medical journals. He was a Hebrew poet of note and his poems appeared in the journals Bikkurei ha-Ittim and Kokhevei Yiẓḥak and in a collection Pirkei Leshon Ever (1873). In these poems he was the first to scan by Ashkenazi word accent. He also translated German and Latin poems into Hebrew, including those of Goethe and Schiller. Probably his most important contribution to Jewish scholarship was Medizin der Talmudisten (1885), with an appendix on Anthropologie der alten Hebräer. He also wrote Studien über die naturwissenschaftlichen Kentnisse der Talmudisten (1880); Eheverhältnisse der alien Juden im Vergleich mit den griechischen und römischen (1881); Der Himmel und seine Wunder… (also published under the title Mythologie der alten Hebräer, 1882); and a history of Hungarian Jewry, Geschichte der Juden in Ungarn (Ger. and Hg., 1879). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carmilly-Weinberger, in: Aresheth, 4 (1966), 400–1.