Sepher HaZichronoth [autobiography]. Autograph Manuscript, in Hebrew and Yiddish.

WIGODER, MYER JOEL.

(Laizovo-Dublin)

1886-1922

Final leaves contain a short chronological list of events discussed in the memoir.

Memoir from his youth in Vekshna (near Kovno), Lithuania, through his travels in Russia, Holland and England, to his later years in Dublin, Ireland. Contains family history, details of his education, scholarship, business affairs, correspondence, trials and tribulations. An abbreviated English translation of Wigoder’s autobiography entitled My Life, was published in Leeds, 1935. The translator writes in the introduction: “Much of its original beauty and philosophy has of necessity been lost in this abridged translation.” Indeed this manuscript contains much ancillary information, letters and poetry not included in the translation. Meir Joel Wigoder (1855-1933) was a lay-scholar who published fifteen works on Midrashic and Aggadic topics. Upon losing all his possessions in a fire in the town of Laizovo soon after he was married, he emigrated in 1890 to Dublin, Ireland. After pursuing fifteen different methods of earning a living he settled on a picture-framing business – ironically selling pictures of Catholic saints while composing his Aggadic novellae when the shop was quiet. Many intriguing events are described: His excitement upon discovering in Dublin a treasure trove of rare Hebrew books, his thoughts on Zionist matters and related speeches heard, the pogroms in Russia, social and economic conditions of Irish life, community and synagogue affairs, the personalities of the Jewish families resident in Dublin (Rabbis Aaron Glikman and Isaac Herzog). After Wigoder’s wife died in 1906 (names of all visitors to her shiva are recorded), he raised his eight children on his own while also teaching Hebrew classes to the children of Dublin’s tight-knight Jewish community. A charming and detailed memoir that records the Lithuanian-Jewish ethos of Dublin’s “Little Jerusalem” in the early part of the 20th-century.