Perl, Joseph

Perl, Joseph a Jewish savant, was born about 1773. He holds a prominent position in Jewish history and literature as propagator of the modern school system among the Jews in Austro-Galicia. He gave time and money for the foundation of a higher school for the Jews at Tarnopol, which afterwards became famous, and of which he was the president until his death, Oct. 1, 1839. He not only aimed at a correction of the educational and school system, but also fought against the Chasidaic obscurantism, which tried to suppress every new movement that aimed at the amelioration of the condition of the Jews. For this purpose he wrote, מגלה טמירין, 151 epistles written after the fashion of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum (Vienna, 1819): — דברי צהיקַים, against the Chasidimn and their rabbins (ibid. 1830): — בוחן צדיק, a kind of criticism of his Epistolae, also against the Chasidim (ibid. 1838). See Ftirst, Bibl. Jud. 3:78; Gratz,

Geschichte der Juden, 11:487 sq.; Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sekten, 3:185, 343; Mannheimer, Leichenrede (Vienna, 1840); Rappaport, in Kerem Chemed, 4:45-57; 5:163 sq.; Busch, Jahrbuch, 1846, 1847; Zunz, Monatstage (Engl. transi. by Rev. B. Pick, in Jewish Messenger, New York, 1874). (B. P.)