HAMBURGER, JACOB

HAMBURGER, JACOB (1826–1911), German rabbi and scholar. Hamburger, who was born in Loslaw (Wodzislaw, Poland), served as rabbi in Neustadt (near Pinne, Poland) and Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Prussia). His most important work was his two-volume Real-Encyklopaedie fuer Bibel und Talmud, the first such work ever published in the German language (1874–83) dealing with the Bible and Talmud respectively. This he later extended into a three-volume Real-Encyklopaedie des Judentums (1874–1900, 1904–053), the third volume dealing with post-talmudic Judaism. Hamburger also began to write Geist der Hagada, an alphabetical anthology of talmudic and midrashic sayings, but only completed the letter A (1857). He also contributed the section on the Karaites and other matters to Winter and Wuensche's standard work on post-biblical literature, Juedische Litteratur seit Abschluss des Kanons (1894–96). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. Sokolow (ed.), Zikkaron le-Soferei Yisrael… (1889), 29. (Alexander Carlebach)