Landau, Moses
LANDAU, MOSES
LANDAU, MOSES (1788–1852), printer, publisher, and lexicographer. Born in Prague, grandson of R. Ezekiel *Landau, Moses was imbued with the traditional atmosphere of his rabbinical family. At the same time, he devoted himself to secular studies, especially German literature. He established a Hebrew printing press in Prague, which, for more than two decades, published sacred literature along with some contemporary Hebrew works, including several volumes of the scholarly periodical *Kerem Ḥemed. From 1831 until his death he was head of the Prague Jewish community and was instrumental in bringing Solomon Judah *Rapoport there to serve as rabbi. From 1849 he served on the Prague municipal council. The best known of his works, He-Arukh u-Musaf he-Arukh im Ma'aneh Lashon (5 vols., 1819–35), is the talmudic dictionary by R. *Nathan b. Jehiel with a German translation. Other works are Pitron ha-Millot (Prague, 1827), which deals with the difficult terms found in the Torah; an edition of the Hebrew Bible, with a German translation and a Hebrew commentary on several books (1834–38); a German translation of the maḥzor with a Hebrew commentary; the kinot for the Ninth of Av; the Passover Haggadah; and Marpe Lashon (Odessa, 1865), a collection of the foreign words in Rashi's commentary on the Bible and the Talmud.
bibliography:
Kressel, Leksikon, 2 (1967), 290.
[Getzel Kressel]