Katsenelson, Lev Izrailevich

Yehuda Leib Binyamin Katsenelson was born in 1847 ^[2] in the city of Chernigov in the Russian Empire . Having lost his father early, he studied in a cheder until ten years old, and then, when he was 13 years old, he was sent to study in the sphere (the scribe of the Holy Scriptures and phylacteries), and Katsenelson, working up to 12 hours a day on sacred parchments, did not stop dreaming about the career of a Talmudist. In the 15th year of his life, he secretly from his relatives left for Bobruisk , where in yeshivot he set about studying the Talmud ^[3] .

At this time, Katsenelson independently learned the German language , and in the 19th year of his life he became acquainted with the Russian language . Unable to get a systematic education in Bobruisk, he went almost without money to Zhytomyr in 1866, where he entered a rabbinical school, after which he entered the Medical and Surgical Academy in 1872. Upon completion of training in 1877, Katsenelson went as a military doctor to the Russian-Turkish war and, upon returning, passed the exam for a doctor of medicine and entered the service as a resident at the Alexander Hospital in St. Petersburg ^[3] .

In the late 1870s, the literary work of Lev Izrailevich Katsenelson began in the periodicals “ Russian Jew ” and “ Jewish Review ”. His feuilletons, under the pseudonym Buki ben-Yogli, which reflected the ideological turning point of the then Jewish intelligentsia, created a name for him in Jewish literature (later came out separately in 1902 under the title “Thoughts and Dreams”) ^[3] .

His subsequent works were mainly devoted to scientific issues. After making sure that Talmudists showed a thorough acquaintance with different areas of anatomy and pathology , Katsenelson decided to familiarize the modern medical world with this area. His first work was the article “ Information about hemophilia in the Talmud ” (Jewish Review, 1885). A more thorough work on Talmudic medicine was published by Katsenelson in the Gaiom newspaper under the name Remach Ebarim (published separately in 1888). In the Talmud, it is often said that the number of bones of the human body is 248. Many physicians who are knowledgeable in Talmudic literature have long been interested in the question: “ why does the number of bones in the Talmudic account turn out to be much more than modern anatomy believes ”? The scientist found an explanation of the issue in the difference in the method of preparation of skeletons now and in antiquity ^[4] . Based on the data of embryology , he tried to determine the age at which the number of bones of a person after digestion of his skeleton can be approximately 248. This work, written in a strictly scientific spirit and, at the same time, in elegant Hebrew , enriched the natural scientific terminology of Hebrew and served as the basis for a more extensive work in Russian under the title: " Anatomy (normal and pathological) in Hebrew writing and its relation to ancient Greek medicine ." This work, for which he received a doctorate, attracted the attention of medical historians and, on behalf of Professor Rudolf Cobert, was translated into German and printed in the fifth volume of his “ Historische Studien ” ^[3] .

Among the significant works of Katsenelson on the history of medicine , his work “ On the names of cutaneous diseases in the Holy Scriptures ”, published in 1894 in the collection “Ga-Iekev,” where he tries to bring more clarity, mainly to the extremely complex chapter on tsar’s, should be included. in the Pentateuch (Lev., XIII). Having understood the etymological meaning of the terminology of this chapter, Katsenelson had to disagree with both the overwhelming majority of commentators and the authors of the majority of medical works, who tried to bring some diseases known to us to biblical descriptions ^[5] . However, this work was to enter only occasionally in a study conceived by scientists about ritual purity among the ancient Jews. The first 2 parts of this study were published in the journal Voskhod for 1897 and 1898 under the title Institute of Ritual Purity (Hebrew, Jesode Tum'ah we-Taarah in the three-month period Hasman, 1903) and Sadducees and the Pharisees ”(the first part, translated into German by J. Israelson, is placed in the“ Monatsschrift für J. Wiss. u. Gesch. ”for 1900). Although the author, in his words, wanted to trace and critically cover the historical development of only this group of laws, he simultaneously developed many phenomena from the life of ancient Jews and expressed a number of new views ^[3] .

This series of works also includes a number of articles published in the " Gamelitz " (1896-1897) under the general title " Zerorot u-ressissim " and explaining various places in the Talmud related to medicine. These are excerpts from the extensive work “The Medical Basics of Terefot, ” the beginning of which is printed in the Russian translation of Mishna N. A. Pereferkovich as an introduction to the treatise Chulin ^[3] .

Of the works of general content, his articles “ Religion and Politics of the Ancient Jews ” (Collection “Future” for 1900 and 1902) and “ Babylonian Captivity ” (“Sunrise”, 1901) ^{[3] are the} most famous.

Along with this scientific activity, Katsenelson was engaged in literary work, mainly in the Hebrew language. His oriental legends: “Ben Adne ha-Sode”, “Ha-Jogeb”, “Ha Ischa ascher lo iadah Zechok” and others, by their peculiar racy style and artistic completeness, are among the best in the symbolic genre. According to L. O. Kantor , “ using Mishnai-Talmudic language in his scientific works, Katsenelson in his literary works is an admirer of a purely biblical language, which he masterfully owns, combining the beauty and biblical naivete of presentation with easy and flexible application to modern forms of thinking and speech. The features of his literary work also include soft, sometimes rather caustic, but always elegant humor ” ^[3] .

Lev Izrailevich Katsenelson was also the editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron , where he placed a number of his articles ^[6] .

Since 1892, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonial Society, a member of the Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Education between Jews (since 1910 a comrade (deputy) chairman) ^[3] .

After the death of the founder of the Courses of Oriental Studies, Baron D. G. Gunzburg , Katsenelson began to manage these courses ^[3] .

Lev Izrailevich Katsenelson died in 1917 in St. Petersburg and was buried in the Preobrazhensky Jewish cemetery .

• Katsenelson Yehuda Leib Binyamin - article from the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia