A Chapter in the History of the Haskalah Movement in Romania: The Group of the Three Maskilim Mordechai Strelisker, Matityahu Simcha Rabener, Hillel Kahane

The aim of our paper is to present a chapter of the Haskalah Movement in Romania: the group of the three Galician maskilim who immigrated to Romania - Mordechai ben David Strelisker (Marvad Sat, 1808-1875, settled in Mihăileni, 1852/53), Matityahu Simcha Rabener (Hamashbir, 1829?-1901?, settled in Fălticeni and later in Jassy, 1867), Hillel Kahane (1821-1901, settled in Botoșani). They were friends. Their connection was mentioned by Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Eliyahu Igel of Czernowitz in 1868, in the foreward to the book of poems „Todah uberakhah” by Mordechai Strelisker, with the hope that this group would spread the Haskalah in Romania. Rabener, a poet, a teacher, and a preacher, edited and published the Hebrew review „Zimrath haaretz”, which appeared in only two numbers, 1872 and 1876/77, but was the central publication of the Haskalah in Romania: many maskilim Hebrew writers published in this review. Strelisker, influenced in his youth by Nachman Krochmal, was a writer and a polemist for the modernization of education and a fighter for the emancipation of Romanian Jewry. Kahane was the founder and the principal of a modern school, and authored the book „Geliloth haaretz”, the first Hebrew book of geography. At the end of the 60s and in the beginning of the 70s they contributed to the spread of the Haskalah values in Romania.