Beis Evel and Beis HaRoeh by Myer Joel Wigoder of Dublin, Ireland, Jerusalem 1914.

Myer Joel Wigoder was a lay-scholar who published fifteen works on Midrashic and Aggadic topics.  He was born in the village of Vigoda, near Vexna, Lithuania in 1855 and had a thorough Yeshiva education.  Upon losing all his possessions in a fire in the town of Laizovo soon after he was married, he emigrated in 1890 to Dublin, Ireland.  He was eventually joined by his brother, Doctor George “Selig” Wigoder.  Both brothers wrote and published books.  They were direct descendants of Rabbi Isiah Horowitz (1555-1630), known as the “Sheloh” after his famous work, Shenei Luchos Habris.

I have written before about Dr. George Wigoder’s books (click to see them) Beth Avigdor and Keter Torah.

Myer Joel Wigoder wrote a long list of Hebrew books, and also an important autobiography, originally written in Hebrew, which was published in English after his death in 1935.  I have written separately about his books, which are also in my collection, Chayei Olam and Beis Hakeneses.

This volume contains two books, published by the author in Dublin in 1914 and printed in Jerusalem (there was probably no Hebrew printing house in Dublin a the time).  The first book, Beis Evel, contains eulogies for Rabbi Aaron Leib Glikman, Rabbi in Dublin, Robert (Reuvein) Bradlaw, who was a communal leader in Dublin and Myer Wigoder’s brother, George Wigoder’s father-on-law, Theodor Herzl and, poignantly, Myer Wigoder’s wife, Tamareh Gittel, who had died at a relatively young age after a long illness in 1906.