BADER, GERSHOM

BADER, GERSHOM (Gustav ; 1868–1953), Hebrew and Yiddish journalist and writer. Bader, who was born in Cracow, taught there after attending rabbinical seminaries outside Galicia. From 1893 until 1912 he lived in Lvov, where in 1904 he founded the first Yiddish daily in Galicia, the Togblat (from 1906, Nayes Lemberger Togblat), and contributed regularly to Ha-Maggid and other Hebrew papers. From 1896 to 1912 he published and edited the Yidisher Folkskalender, a popular Galician literary almanac. He translated Genesis into Polish and published Hebrew language textbooks. His anthologies,Leket Peraḥim and Zer Peraḥim (1895–96), helped to popularize Hebrew literature and in 1896 he edited the fifth volume of the literary miscellany Oẓar ha-Sifrut. From 1896 to 1912 he produced the Lukhes annuals in Yiddish, and from 1903–04 a parallel Hebrew annual miscellany, Ḥermon. In 1912 Bader settled in New York, where he contributed to the Togblat and the Jewish Morning Journal. Of his Yiddish plays, the most successful was Dem Rebens Nign ("The Rabbi's Melody"), produced in 1919. His writings include: Ḥelkat Meḥokek, a life of Jesus (1889); Medinah va-Ḥakhameha, a lexicon of Galician Jewish cultural figures (1934); and Mafte'aḥ le-Rashei Tevot…, a dictionary of talmudic abbreviations (1951); Jewish Spiritual Heroes (3 vols., in English 1940); and his memoirs, Mayne Zikhroynes (1953).

bibliography:

G. Bader, Medinah va-Ḥakhameha (1934), autobiographical preface; idem, in: Genazim, 1 (1960), 82–90 (autobiography); Rabbi Binyamin, Mishpeḥot Soferim (1959), 134–5.

[Getzel Kressel]