Long letter and poem in the handwriting and signature of the Hebrew linguist and poet, one of the fathers of the Jewish Enlightenment movement - Naphtali Hirz Wessely. 1784.
Words that Naphtali Hirz Wessely sent to Shimon Friedlander with a request to print the manuscripts of his poems that have not yet been printed. In the first part of the letter, Wessely quotes the letter he sent, which opens with titles of respect: "אל כבוד הרב החכם... גאון ישראל עטרת ראשי... מי כמוך הגיבור חיל להקים שם בישראל, הכל ברוח בינתך הלכת... והיה כנגן המנגן שיריך מאז מחברותיך ביהודה נפוצו... היום ישתחוו לפניך החכם!". In his letter, Naphtali Wessely asked him to agree to print his poems for the benefit of a group of enlightened young men. In the reply letter which Wessely quotes in full, the poet replies to him that he and his friends should not seek a new spirit in the holy poems whose foundations are in the depth of the wisdom of the Torah, and that he and his group should not focus on the beauty of the eloquence of the poem but on the deep message embedded in it, which is the love and fear of God. And in the midst of the things, he even added a poem in praise of the observance of the commandments. And he elaborates on this matter.
Later, several poems written by Wessely appear, and poems by intellectuals that he copied in his own handwriting.
Naphtali Hirz Wessely [1725-1805] was a Hebrew linguist and poet, one of the fathers of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. His work "Divrei Shalom Ve'emet", which deals with a comprehensive change in Jewish education, sparked a stormy polemic between the early intellectuals and the rabbis of communities in Europe. The cycle of poems he composed about the figure of Moses, "Shirei Tiferet", influenced several generations of poets after him, and some see it as the beginning of modern Hebrew literature. In 1785, Naphtali Hirz published "Sefer HaMidot", which deals with ethics and the wisdom of the soul, and contains some of the moral perceptions that arose in those years in Europe. While working on the book, in 1783, his wife died, and from then until the end of his life he worked on his great work "Shirei Tiferet".
[10] pages. All in the handwriting of Naphtali Hirz Wessely. Tears repaired in some of the pages with minor damage to text.
