Background
Abraham Hayyim Rosenberg was born in Karlin (Pinsk), the son of Uzziel Yaffa Rosenberg and Leah Lieberman. His father, a Hebrew scholar, tutored him in Hebrew and the Talmud.
Abraham Hayyim Rosenberg was born in Karlin (Pinsk), the son of Uzziel Yaffa Rosenberg and Leah Lieberman. His father, a Hebrew scholar, tutored him in Hebrew and the Talmud.
He entered the Rabbinical Seminary in Zhitomir.
After his graduation Rosenberg served as district Rabbi in Pinsk from 1872 to 1881. In 1881 he accepted the post of district Rabbi in Nikolayev, and was also instructor of Jewish history and religion at the classical gymnasium in the same city. He was exposed to petty police persecution on account of his liberal views, and moved from the city in 1888, accepting a Rabbinical post in Poltava.
Still further subjected to police hostility, he quit the country and emigrated to the United States in 1891. He started his literary career by writing articles in the field of Jewish learning and sketches of Jewish life which were published in the Russian magazines, Russkiy Evrey, Voskhod, Razsviet, Evreiskia Zapiski, and in the Hebrew journals, Ha-melitz, Ha-karmel, Ha-eshkol. He was also the author of a Jewish history in Russian. His chief field of study, however, was the Bible. While still in Russia he had conceived the idea of publishing a Hebrew cyclopedia of Biblical literature. He was able to publish this magnum opus, to which he devoted his life, only many years later in America.
Settling down in the ghetto of New York City he deliberately chose to maintain himself with the aid of a small printing press in a basement, his main concern being the printing of his cyclopedia. Indeed, the first two volumes were set up by himself, appearing in 1898 and 1899. The whole work, consisting of ten volumes, entitled Ozar ha-shemoth, was published by a group of admirers two years before his death, and won wide recognition, definitely establishing Rosenberg's reputation as a Biblical scholar.
Apart from his chief interest, Rosenberg devoted time to other branches of both Hebrew and Yiddish literature. In 1891 he was editor of the Hebrew weekly Ha-ibri, published by Kathriel Sarasohn, an editor of the Hebrew literary monthly Ner ha-maarabi in 1895. He also contributed numerous articles to Ha-leom, Ha-pisgah, Ha-yom, Ha-modia le-hodashim and other Hebrew periodicals.
He began to write Yiddish after coming to the United States, and contributed popular historical articles to the Yiddish press and longer works published in installments. These include a history of ritual murder cases and a discussion of agriculture among Jews in times of the prophets and the Talmud. Several books in Yiddish, including a life of the patriarch Abraham and an account of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Gerush Spanien, came from his pen.
Rosenberg was known as the author of Hebrew cyclopedia of Biblical literature, containing an historical and geographical description of the persons, places, and other subjects mentioned in the Old Testament. His most ambitious undertaking in Yiddish was the translation and adaptation of Johann Gustav Vogt's Weltgeschichte in twelve volumes, to which he added much new material and an additional section devoted to Jewish history and literature and published in 1918.
Rosenberg was married twice. His second wife was Clara Bercinsky. He was the father of four children.
