Moses Danzig. Zur Juden-Frage.

Preceding by a decade Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation (see Lot 236), this treatise lambasts the condition of exile and persecution fostered by an anti-Semitic Europe. Composed by Moses Danzig, pen-name of Moyshe-Leyb Khashkes (1848? -1906), a “writer, poet, and journalist. Born in Vilna…(he) studied at several yeshivas and lived in different parts of the Russian Empire. From the late 1860s, he contributed to Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals and published popular novels, brochures, and collections of satiric poetry in both languages. His sensationalist novel, Odeser voyle yungn (The Tough Guys of Odessa; 1872) is one of the earliest depictions of the urban underworld in Yiddish literature. He also translated into Russian parts of Heinrich Graetz’s The History of the Jews. Khashkes died in St. Petersburg.” (YIVO Encyclopedia).