Moïse Schwab


Moïse Schwab was a French librarian and author.

Life

He was educated at the Jewish school and the Talmud Torah at Strasburg. From 1857 to 1866 he was secretary to Salomon Munk; then for a year he was official interpreter at the Paris court of appeals; and from 1868 was librarian at the Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1880 he was sent by the minister of public instruction to Bavaria and Württemberg to make investigations with regard to early Hebrew printing-presses.

Works

Schwab was a prolific contributor to the Jewish press; and he is the author of the following works, all of which were published in Paris:
His most important work is Le Talmud de Jérusalem, which was commenced in 1867 or 1868, before the appearance of Zecharias Frankel's Introduction'' or of the special dictionaries of the Talmud. The first part appeared in 1871 and was well received, although the critics did not spare Schwab. He then sought the cooperation of the leading Talmudists; but he was unsuccessful and had to complete the work alone.
In addition to his work in Talmudic studies, he also produced editions of a number of Jewish Aramaic Magic bowls, though these were described as 'incredibly poor' by one scholar.