Literatureאהרן קמינקא

Aharon Ḳaminḳa

Aharon Kaminka was a rabbi, scholar, poet and translator who rendered classical Greek and Latin works into Hebrew.

1866 to 1950Hebrew translations of classical literatureChief rabbi of OsijekInvestigating the 1903 Kishinev pogromBible commentaries

Born: 5 May 1866, Berdychiv
Died: 12 March 1950, Tel Aviv
Occupation: translator, university teacher, poet, rabbi
Education: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Aharon Ḳaminḳa was born in 1866 in Berdychiv

Aharon Kaminka was born in Berdychiv, in the Russian Empire, to Zeev Wolf and Sarah Beila. As a child he studied with private teachers hired by his father. In 1880 he entered the rabbinical seminary in Berlin headed by Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer.

He went on to study philosophy, Oriental languages and political economy in Hamburg, Riga and at the University of Berlin, and also studied in Paris. He earned a doctorate and was ordained as a rabbi.

He served as a rabbi in Frankfurt an der Oder, in Prague from 1893 to 1897, and as chief rabbi of Osijek from 1897 to 1900. He then moved to Vienna, where he taught and lectured on Jewish philosophy and was chief secretary of the Israelitische Allianz. In 1903 the Allianz sent him with Bialik and others to Kishinev to investigate the pogrom there.

He was a Zionist activist and took part in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. He translated Seneca, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and Sappho into Hebrew, and wrote poetry, a play and Bible commentaries.

After the Anschluss in 1938 the Nazis arrested him for a short time. On his release he moved to the Land of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv. He died on March 12, 1950, and was buried in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery.