Mulder, Samuel (Ed). Peri To’eleth.

(AMSTERDAM).

J. Van Embden

Amsterdam

1825

Hebrew signature of Itzik Levi Miller, Secretary of the Society (p. 6 of preliminary pages). A crisp, clean copy.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 2523.

To’eleth (or in the Dutch Jewish pronunciation “Tongeleth”) was a Dutch literary society of religious Jews, who as members of the Haskalah Movement, advocated revival of the Hebrew tongue as a literary vehicle. This volume contains literary contributions (poetry, eulogies, Talmudic novellae, biographies) by several members of the short-lived movement founded in 1816 by Dr. Samuel Israel Mulder (1792-1862), a central figure in Dutch Jewish civic affairs. Of especial note is Mulder’s Hebrew romance, Beruryah (see pp. 53-94). Lachower in his History of Modern Hebrew Literature, notes that “Beruryah far stands out among other poems and poetic creations of the time.” A glaring difference between the Dutch and German Haskalah movements is that the Dutch were conservative by nature and thus did not demand the extreme religious reforms that was often typical of the German approach.