William Zeitlin

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William Zeitlin (1850 - 1921 Leipzig), Russian scholar and bibliographer.

He was born at Homel, government (guberniya) of Moghilef, about the middle of the nineteenth century. He is known especially as the author of "Qiryat Sefer," or Bibliotheca Hebraica Post-Mendelssohniana (Leipsic, 1891-95), a bibliographical dictionary of modern Hebrew literature from the beginning of Mendelssohn's epoch until 1890. The compilation of this work occupied Zeitlin for twenty years. Hemade extensive use of Benjacob's "Otzar ha-Sefarim" and of Fürst's Bibliotheca Judaica, and visited Wilna and Warsaw, the centers of the Hebrew book market, as well as many university cities—as Königsberg, Berlin, Geneva, and Paris—from the libraries of which he gathered additional material for his work. The "Qiryat Sefer" indexes not only works in book form, but also important periodical articles, biographical sketches, and scientific essays, in addition to giving biographical notes on several authors. Zeitlin had previously prepared an index of works written on the Jewish calendar, in which he enumerates seventy-seven Hebrew works; this index was published by Chayyim Jonah Gurland in "Yevreiski Kalendar" (St. Petersburg, 1882). In the "Zeit. für Hebr. Bibl." (ix. 3-4) Zeitlin has recently published an alphabetical list of anagrams and pseudonyms of modern Hebrew writers; and he is a contributor to several Hebrew periodicals, writing mostly biographical articles.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.

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William Zeitlin

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