A. A. KRYUKOV

Head of the Representative Office of Rossotrudnichestvo in Israel

In the spring of this year, the Moscow publishing house "Kuchkovo Pole" published a neat, hardcover book - 416 pages - " Hebrew in your pocket. Russian-Hebrew, Hebrew-Russian Dictionary". An ordinary event - about 10 thousand words. Similar dictionaries are now published in various Russian and Israeli publishers almost annually.

But until relatively recently, less than half a century ago, the publication of the first "Hebrew-Russian dictionary" in our country was an event of truly "universal scale", it immediately became a bibliographic rarity. Today we publish a brief history of the dictionary's publication and tell you about its creator, the outstanding linguist Felix L. Shapiro.

The "Khrushchev thaw" of the early 1960s was marked by a very intense but unfortunately brief period of rapprochement between the USSR and Israel (until Moscow severed diplomatic relations with Israel in June 1967). An exchange of delegations of representatives of public organizations, scientists, cultural figures and artists began.

A major event was the publication of the Hebrew-Russian Dictionary, compiled by F. L. Shapiro, in Moscow in 1963. The editor of the publication was a brilliant semitologist, Professor Benzion Meirovich Grande, who for a number of years headed the Department of Arabic Philology at the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University (IVYA, since 1972-the Institute of Asian and African Countries, ISAA).

The first publication of this kind in the Soviet Union almost immediately became a bibliographic rarity. Dictionary with a circulation of 25 thousand copies. The list included about 28,000 words of literary Hebrew, socio-political vocabulary, terminology from the fields of science and technology, agriculture, art and sports. The preparation and publication of the dictionary became a kind of professional feat of Felix Lvovich (Feitel Leibovich) Shapiro (1879-1961) was a true ascetic in the study and teaching of this language.

The future Hebrew scholar was born in the family of a teacher named Kheder* in the small town of Kholui near Bobruisk. At the age of two, the child learned Hebrew, or, as they said at the time, the Hebrew alphabet, and at the age of three he could read. He studied at Cheder, then at a yeshiva. Having received a traditional Jewish education, Faytel Shapiro, as one of the best graduates, was entrusted with the duties of a rabbi. Thus, he faced the fate of a state-owned rabbi in the synagogue of one of the many Jewish towns outside the"pale of settlement".

However, the young man was attracted to the big world, educational activities. F. Shapiro independently learns Russian and enters a pedagogical school, after which he received the right to engage in teaching activities among the Jewish population. In 1900, he continued his studies at Kharkiv University and became a dentist, which allowed him, a Jew, to live in St. Petersburg. He entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg State University. At the same time, he was engaged in literary and journalistic work, published in newspapers published in Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish. Shapiro married in 1907.

Due to the poor health of his wife, who was shown the southern climate, F. L. Shapiro leaves the northern capital. In 1913, he was awarded the position of director of the central Synagogue's primary Jewish school in Baku. F. Shapiro ensured that all subjects at the Baku Jewish School were taught in Hebrew. Soon, it will take over the entire business of Jewish education in the region. An innovator and reformer, he created classes for children from different Jewish communities - Ashkenazi, as well as communities of Georgian and mountain Jews. Hebrew has become the language that unites all Jews.

In 1920, the Soviet government issued a decree on the closure of Jewish schools. They were closed one by one, Hebrew was excluded from the educational system, and the study of the holy books of Judaism was virtually banned.

Shapiro, like many Jewish intellectuals of that time, lost the opportunity to work in accordance with his vocation. And he set about creating an orphanage for street children. Such an institution - "Commune House" for orphaned children-was created in the suburbs of Baku. Then F. Shapiro was invited to the capital, where he moved with his family in 1924 and worked for many years in the public education system.

In 1947, at the age of 68, he retired. By that time, he was an old, sick and tired man who was waiting for the monotonous life of a Soviet pensioner... Suddenly, the situation changed.

After the proclamation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the Soviet leadership was faced with the need to train professional specialists who knew Hebrew. F. L. Shapiro, despite his advanced age, willingly responded to an invitation received in 1953 (just six months after Stalin's death) to teach Hebrew at the Institute of International Relations of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Higher Diplomatic School, and with a group of censors of the V. I. Lenin State Library, who examined Hebrew literature.

In 1954, on his own initiative, he began working on a Hebrew-Russian dictionary, which was based on one of the best Israeli explanatory dictionaries of Avraham Even-Shoshana at that time, as well as the dictionary of Meir Medan.

* Cheder is a Jewish primary religious school for boys.

** Yeshiva - a higher religious educational institution, a center for the development and preservation of traditional Jewish culture.

When F. Shapiro had almost finished his work when a notice came from the publisher that the dictionary was excluded from the plan, because "at this time its output is not relevant." Then the book was accepted for publication, but with a much smaller circulation - instead of 200 thousand copies. only 25 thousand copies.

From 1953 until the day of his death in 1961, F. L. Shapiro worked incredibly hard, 15-18 hours a day. In addition to teaching at the Moscow State University Institute of Jewish Studies, he gave lectures on Hebrew, lectures on ethnography, in particular, on the life and everyday life of mountain Jews, and wrote a Hebrew textbook (which was never published in the end).

The main work of the scientist was "Hebrew-Russian dictionary". The compiler managed to finish it and make the first proofreading, but the publication was published only in 1963, two years after the author's death. According to L. Shapiro-Prestina, a significant part of the print run (already extremely small) was sold abroad - to the United States, England, and France.¹

..Shapiro was buried in the Vostryakov Cemetery in Moscow. Professor B. M. Grande concluded the preface to the dictionary with the following words: "Let this dictionary serve as the best monument to the bright memory of the great Hebrew language expert and teacher Felix Lvovich Shapiro." ²

In 1999, the book "Dictionary of the Forbidden Language" was published in Beersheba-a collection of articles about the life and work of F. L. Shapiro, reprinted on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of his birth in Belarus, the birthplace of the outstanding lexicologist (Minsk, MET Publishing House, 2005). In 2007, one of the new squares Beersheba was named after Felix Shapiro.

^{Shapiro-Prestina L.} 1 He helped Alice / / Alef. June-July 1993, N 484. pp. 26-27.

^{Grande B.} 2 Preface / / Hebrew-Russian Dictionary, Moscow, 1963, p. 5.

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