Background
Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport was born in 1790 at Lemberg, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now Lviv, Ukraine).
Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport was born in 1790 at Lemberg, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now Lviv, Ukraine).
Thrown upon his own resources about 1817, Rapoport became the collector of the meat-tax on farmers. He had already given evidence of marked critical ability, though his writings previously published were of a light character—poems and translations. His critical talent, however, soon revealed itself. In 1824 he wrote an article for Bikkure ha-'Ittim on the independent Jewish tribes of Arabia and Abyssinia. Though this article gained him some recognition, a more permanent impression was made by his work on Saadia Gaon and his times (published in the same journal in 1829), the first of a series of biographical works on the medieval Jewish sages. Because of this work he received recognition in the scholarly world and gained many enthusiastic friends, especially S. D. Luzzatto. After various experiences in business, Rapoport became successively rabbi of Tarnopol (1837) and of Prague (1840). His chief work was the first part of an (unfinished) encyclopaedia ('Erekh Millin, 1852). Equally notable were his biographies of the Gaon Saadiah, Nathan author of the Arnkh, the Gaon Hai, Eleazar Kalir and others.
He married in 1810 Franziska Freide Heller.