Biography and Initial Studies On Jewish History
He studied law, philosophy and history at Lviv University. Accidentally he encountered materials on the history of Jews in Kraków, and on the request of the Kraków Jewish kahal, he wrote the first volume of "The History of Jews in Cracow and Kazimiria 1304-1655" (Kraków, 1912). It gave him some reputation in Lviv University. Balaban then won a high ministry scholarship, and departed for a long scientific trip to Poznań, Berlin and Gdańsk. He stayed for several months in Kraków collecting materials for the second volume of the history of Kraków Jews. Simultaneously he started the publication "The history of Jewish system in Poland" in "Evreiskaia Starina" ("Jewish Old Times", as translated from Russian) magazine. He taught in different schools in the Lviv region and Lviv combining studying with teaching and research. He spent the first year of World War I in Vienna teaching at the gymnasium for Galician refugees. The next three years, he spent in Lublin as a referent (reporter) on Jewish matters by the Austrian General Government. At these posts, he organised many Jewish kahals and gymnasiums. Together with Dr. Ozjasz Thon and Dr. Moses Schorr, Balaban was one of the founders of the Institute of Jewish Sciences in Warsaw. Here Balaban taught Jewish history and led the historical seminar which issued many works on the history of Jews in Poland and in particular in the Polish kingdom. Balaban had also published "The history of Jews in Galicia" in 1916. Since 1903 Balaban led the review of the bibliography of the history of Jews in Poland in the Polish historical magazine "Kwartalnik historyczny" ("History Qarterly"). During nine years Balaban had been administering the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary (1920–1929) and for 1920-1921 he had been also the rector of the gymnasium "Askola". The fate of Balaban was also tragic like Schorr's one. He died in the Warsaw ghetto on December 26, 1942.
Read more about this topic: Meir Balaban
Famous quotes containing the words biography, initial, studies, jewish and/or history:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.”
—Henry George (1839–1897)
“What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die.”
—Philip Roth (20th century)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)