Judah Löb Davidovich (1855, in

Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

– 1 January 1898, in

Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...

) was a Russian

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

writer and translator. After serving in the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

, Davidovich studied surgery, but failed to find work as a ''

feldsher A feldsher (, , , , , , ) is a health care professional who provides various medical services limited to emergency treatment and ambulance practice. As such, a feldsher is one kind of mid-level medical practitioner. In Russia, Ukraine and in ...

''. After a futile attempt to make a career as a singer, he settled in Odessa about 1885 as a private

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

. There he was influenced by

Ahad Ha'am Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927), primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am (, lit. 'one of the people', ), was a Hebrew journalist and essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. ...

to turn his attention to

Hebrew literature Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews, mostly among the Arab cit ...

. Davidovich translated into Hebrew

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...

's essay on education, with preface and explanatory notes, published by Aḥiasaf under the name ''Ha-Ḥinnukh'' (Warsaw, 1894). He also wrote two articles on educational subjects in ''

Ha-Shiloaḥ ''Ha-Shiloaḥ'' () was a Hebrew language, Hebrew-language literary journal, founded by Ahad Ha'am and the Ahi'asaf Publishing House in 1896. He edited the journal until December 1902, whereupon it came under the editorship of historian Joseph Kla ...

'' (vols. i., ii.).

References

1855 births 1898 deaths English–Hebrew translators Jews from the Russian Empire Jewish writers from Vilnius 19th-century translators from the Russian Empire {{Judaism-bio-stub