Background
When he was 14 years old his parents married him to the daughter of the Talmudist Simhah ben Joshua of Volozhin.
When he was 14 years old his parents married him to the daughter of the Talmudist Simhah ben Joshua of Volozhin.
Having exhausted the knowledge of his Volhynian instructors, Dubno went to Galicia, studying there for several years Biblical exegesis and grammar under the direction of Rabbi Solomon of Cholm. From 1767 to 1772 Dubno lived at Amsterdam, attracted by its rich collections of Hebrew books On leaving Amsterdam he settled in Berlin, earning a livelihood by teaching.
Dubno wrote a commentary for Mendelssohn"s translation of the Bible, of which only a portion—the Alim li-Terufah (Amsterdam, 1778)—was published.
See Jew. Encyc. iii. 192, s.v. Bible Translations. In 1782-1783, he spent about six months in Wilna, living with the wealthy Jewish financier Joseph Pesseles.
(He alludes to this in his work Birkath Yosef, published at Dyhernfurth, 1783) After the death of Mendelssohn, Dubno stopped for a short time in Frankfort-on-the-Main, and then returned to Amsterdam. There, at first fêted, and later ignored, deriving a scanty income from the loan of the books from his rich library, he remained until his death on June 26, 1813.