Maggid, David

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MAGGID, DAVID

MAGGID, DAVID (1862–1942?), scholar and writer. Maggid was born in Vilna, son of Hillel Noah *Maggid-Steinschneider. As secretary to S.J. *Fuenn, he assisted him in writing Ha-Ozar ("The Treasury," 1884–1903) and Keneset Yisrael ("Assembly of Israel," 1886–90), a biographical dictionary of Jewish authors and scholars. Later, in St. Petersburg, he taught Jewish religion in government secondary schools. The author of numerous articles on Jewish history and art, he was also a contributor to the Yevreyskaya Entsiklopediya. His research encompassed Jewish music of antiquity and the Middle Ages as well as the folklore of the Jews of Crimea. In 1919 he succeeded A.A. *Harkavy as librarian of the Jewish and Oriental department of the National Library of Petrograd. In 1921 he was appointed professor of art history at the Russian Institute in Petrograd and in 1925 became professor of Hebrew at the university. He continued to publish articles and works outside the Soviet Union. Notable are his reminiscences of his father and the first maskilim of Vilna, published in Fun Noenten Ovar (1937). Other works include Toledot M. Antokolski ("The Life of M. Antokolski," 1897), Rabbi Mordekhai Aharon Guenzburg (1897), and the completion of his father's work Toledot Mishpehot Guenzburg ("The History of the Guenzburg Families," 1899).

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 2 (1927), 356–9; lnyl, 4 (1963), 535–7.

[Yehuda Slutsky]