Brecher, Gideon

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BRECHER, GIDEON

BRECHER, GIDEON (1797–1873), physician and scholar. He was born in Prossnitz, Moravia, where he was the first Jew to study for the medical profession. Brecher edited *Judah Halevi's Kuzari, in four parts with a Hebrew introduction and commentary (1838–40, including notes by S.D. Luzzatto and J. Weisse). He published Transcendentale Magie und magische Heilarten im Talmud (1850); Beschneidung der Israeliten… (1845), with an introduction by H.B. Fassel and an appendix by M. *Steinschneider, a nephew of Brecher, on circumcision among the Muslims; and Unsterblichkeitslehre des israelitischen Volkes (1857; French tr. by I. Cahen, 1857). Brecher's unfinished concordance of biblical names (Elleh ha-Ketuvim be-Shemot) was published posthumously in 1876.