Winter, Jacob

views updated

WINTER, JACOB

WINTER, JACOB (1857–1941), German rabbi and scholar. Born in Hungary, Winter served from 1886 as rabbi in Dresden and received the honorary title of professor from the king of Saxony for his scholarly work.

His main achievement was the three-volume encyclopedic work, Die juedische Litteratur seit Abschluss des Kanons (3 vols., 1894–96), a prose and poetry anthology with biographical and literary-historical introductions, edited in cooperation with the German Orientalist August *Wuensche and leading scholars of the time. The work became a standard reference book on post-biblical Jewish literature. An earlier study by Winter was Die Stellung der Sklaven bei den Juden… (1886). Together with Wuensche, he also translated into German (with annotations) the halakhic Midrashim Mekhilta (1909) and Sifra (1938), and edited the second volume of M. Lazarus, Die Ethik des Judentums (1911).