Kerem Ḥemed

KEREM ḤEMED (Heb. כֶּרֶם חֶמֶד; "vineyard of delight"), Hebrew annual of the Galician *Haskalah. Published in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin from 1833 to 1856, Kerem Ḥemed served as a central forum for Eastern and Western Jewish scholars and authors. The publisher and nominal editor, Samuel Leib *Goldenberg, was a prominent Galician maskil who founded it to take the place of *Bikkurei ha-Ittim, which ceased publication in 1831. Kerem Ḥemed differed from its predecessor in that it did not print belles lettres and was concerned mainly with scholarly research in Judaism and Jewish literature. In accordance with a literary convention in 18^th-century Italy and Germany, the studies were published in the form of letters exchanged by scholars in Eastern Europe (mainly Galicia) and those in the West (first Italy and then other countries). In addition to the talmudic and medieval literary studies, editions of ancient manuscripts and treatises were published with notes and prefaces. The annual reflected Jewish preoccupations during the first half of the 19^th century, namely the various facets of the Haskalah: humanistic and scientific studies, revival of the Hebrew language, and opposition to Ḥasidism and to mystical movements generally. Kerem Ḥemed also published Samuel David *Luzzatto's criticism of medieval Jewish rationalism (Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra) and his commendation of Rashi's conservative and traditional approach.

Kerem Ḥemed published the first works of the philosopher Nachman *Krochmal (mostly unsigned or under a pseudonym), the anti-ḥasidic essays of Josef *Perl and Isaac *Erter, and the controversy between Tobias *Feder and Jakob Samuel *Bick regarding the use of Yiddish, the first such controversy to be carried on in Hebrew. The acting editor of the third and subsequent volumes was Solomon Judah *Rapoport, who, in addition to his studies and commentaries, annotated the works of others. The number of contributors grew from year to year and included writers from Russia, Germany, Hungary and in the last annuals, such figures as L. Zunz, A. Geiger, and the astronomers H.Z. Slonimsky and H.M. Pineles. After Goldenberg's death publication of the annuals ceased until it was revived by Senior Sachs who published the last two annuals in a style similar to their predecessors. Altogether nine volumes appeared, seven edited by Goldenberg and Rapoport, and two by Sachs. An index to all the volumes appears in the first part of Die hebraische Publizistik in Wien (1930), compiled by B. Wachstein whose preface to the index includes an extensive monograph on Kerem Ḥemed.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.