User:StanZhukov22/Ber (Birkenthal) of Bolekhiv

Dov Ber (Birkenthal) of Bolekhiv (1723, Bolekhiv — 1805, same place) — Galician Ashkenazi Jewish writer, chronicler, merchant and wine seller.

Biography
He was born in a family of winemakers. His father was from Mezhyrich but moved to Bolekhiv during the Khmelnitsky Uprising because of his connections with both Polish szlachta and Hungarian nobility.

Other than Talmudic, he learned secular science from a Christian teacher who also taught him Polish, Latin, German and French. He studied various theological Christian works, in especially the New Testament. After his marriage, he opened a large warehouse of Hungarian wine in Lviv, for which he traveled across the Carpathian mountains to Hungary every year. The goods were sold in particular to magnates and the nobility. In addition, he kept a shop in the centre of Bolekhiv. Thanks to acquaintance with powerful nobles he became one of the leading representatives of his people in Galicia. In 1759, he participated in a dispute with the adherents of Jacob Frank in the Lviv Cathedral as a representative of the governmental synagogue.

After the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772 when Galicia became part of the Austrian empire he assumed the surname Birkenthal. Once old, he returned to his native hometown and became one of the leaders of the local Jewish community.

He is the author of two memorials:


 * "Diwre(j) Bira" (Words of reason in Hebrew), in which he criticised the adherents of Jacob Frank and some other sectarian movements of contemporary Judaism.
 * The second work was preserved incomplete and is currently stored in the "Jewish College" library in London.

He translated German and Polish historical works into Hebrew. Other than that, he left memoirs in which he described the social, cultural and political life of the Jewish communities of Galicia in the 18th century.

He was buried on the Jewish cemetery in Bolekhiv and his grave has been preserved.