BRILL, JOSEPH (also known under the pseudonym of "Ayob" [ contracted from Ani Joseph Brill]):

By: Herman Rosenthal

Russian teacher and Hebrew writer; born at Gorki, near Mohilev, on the Dnieper, 1839. He studied Talmud at the yeshibot of Shklov and Vitebsk, and later settled in Minsk, where he opened a school for Jewish boys, and in which town he is still active as teacher and writer.

Brill's first articles appeared in the early sixties in the Hebrew periodicals "Ha-Maggid," "Ha-Meliẓ," and "Ha-Karmel." An excellent Hebrew style and a fine humor are the chief characteristics of his writings. Besides numerous articles in Hebrew year-books and periodicals, he has published: "Ish Jehudi" (The Jew), a translation from the English of the five-act drama by Richard Cumberland, Wilna, 1884; "Kiẓẓur Shulḥan 'Aruk" (Satirical Instructions for Teachers and Pedagogues), in the collection "Oẓar ha-Sifrut," Cracow, 1890; "Midrash Soferim," satirical characteristics of contemporary Hebrew writers, in "Ha-Shaḥar," Vienna, 1879; "Lefanim" (In Times of Old), a sketch in "Oẓar ha-Sifrut," 1892, iv. He has prepared for publication a volume of poems, a volume of aphorisms, proverbs, and a volume of stories. Some of his correspondence with Hebrew writers is published in H. Rosenberg's "Oẓar Miktabim we-Sippurim," St. Petersburg, 1882.

H. R.