1835 - 1917 MENDELE MOCHER SFORIM (Shalom Jacob Abramowitz) (Russia)
Distinguished author and Haskalist (advocate of the Enlightenment Movement). His work focused on the life and problems of the Jewish masses in Russia. Although an unabashed champion of the simple Jew, he strongly criticized jewish life in the small towns and ghetto. At the same time he had no patience for what he saw as the trend in the Haskala for assimilation. Though he wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish, he was renowned as the forerunner of populist Yiddish literature.
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