MENDELSON, MOSES (called also Moses ben Mendel Frankfort):

(Redirected from DESSAU, MOSES.)

By: Isidore Singer, Meyer Kayserling

German Hebraist andwriter of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; born in Hamburg; died there at an advanced age in 1861; a relative of Samson Raphael Hirsch.

Mendelson lived in his native city as a private scholar. He translated into Hebrew the first book of Campe's "Die Entdeckung Amerika's," entitling it "Meẓi'at ha-Areẓ ha-Ḥadashah" (Altona, 1807), and wrote a poem in honor of Ḥakam Isaac Bernays on the occasion of his installation at Hamburg (ib. 1822). His "Baḳḳashat ha-Lammedin," printed by Meïr Hesse, appeared anonymously (ib. 1829). He also published: "Shushan 'Edut, d. i. die Erklärung der Fünf Bücher Moshe's" (Stuttgart, 1840-42), two parts, containing the Book of Genesis and representing, according to his own statement, the fruit of thirty years' labor. The Hebrew introduction to the second section (pp. iii.-lxx.) consists of two treatises, "'Awon ha-Doresh ha-Yashan" and "'Awon ha-Doresh he-Ḥadash," in which in diverting fashion he scourges the old "darshanim" and the modern preachers. Mendelson wrote also "Die Synagoge zu Hamburg, Wie Sie War und Wie Sie Sein Soll" (Copenhagen, 1842), dedicated to the president of the German Jewish congregation of Hamburg.

S. M. K.