SCHERSCHEWSKI, ẒEBI HIRSCH HA-KOHEN:

By: Isidore Singer, M. Seligsohn

Russian Hebrew writer; born at Pinsk in 1840. While still a boy he studied Hebrew grammar and archeology without a teacher. After serving as secretary of the Jewish community of Pinsk, he went to the Crimea, where, at Melitopol, he entered the service of a merchant named Seidener. Later he became assistant editor of Zederbaum's "Ha-Meliẓ." During the Russo-Turkish war he followed the Russian army as a sutler; and after a second short stay with his former employer, Seidener, he settled in 1883 at Rostov-on-the-Don, where he opened a bookstore.

In addition to numerous contributions to current Hebrew journals, Scherschewski wrote "Boser Abot" (Odessa, 1877), a satirical poem on the neglect of the education of Jewish children in Russia, and "'Iyyun Sifrut" (Wilna, 1881), on the development of Jewish literature and its significance as a cultural element for raising the Jews to a higher moral standing. His notes to the Midrash Shoḥer Ṭob are printed in Padua's Warsaw edition of that midrash, and his rimed parodies are to be found in "Keneset Yisrael" (i. 408 et seq., ii. 2-6).

S. M. Sel.