Igereth el Ro'ei Seh Pezurah [“Letter to the Shepherds of a Scattered Flock,” - An open letter to the Leaders of Galician Jewry to secularize the Educational system]

Homberg, Naphtali Hertz

n.p.

Lemberg

1788

only edition

Vinograd, Lemberg 35; H. Liberman, Ohel Rache”l I, pp. 355-6

Hertz Homberg (1749-1841) was one of the pioneers of the Haskalah movement. He achieved infamy due to his collaboration with the Austrian Government in its attempts to assimilate the Jewish people. Distaste for Homberg ran so high that his fomer comrades, architects of Haskalah such as Moses Mendelssohn and Naphtali Herz Wessely, personally censured him. Homberg was appointed by the Austrian authorities superintendent of Jewish schools throughout Galicia .The present Open Letter is an attempt to impose secular education upon the Jews of Galicia and “Ludomiria.” “Homberg's official function consisted of supplying plans to destroy the very foundation of Jewish culture; his “ideology,” whose leitmotif was repugnant careerism, was that of a semi-apostate.” Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia, 1985), p. 124. See also EJ VIII, cols. 940-2. UNCOMMONLY RARE. No copies in the british museum, the bodleian library, the jewish national university library, hebrew union college, new york public library, or the jewish theological seminary.