OPPENHEIM, SIMON BEN DAVID:

By: Gotthard Deutsch

Austrian plagiarist; born in Kromau, Moravia, 1753; died at Pest, where he was dayyan, Jan. 24, 1851. He seems to have pursued his studies in Prague, where he lived at the end of the eighteenth century. There he published a book entitled "'Ammud ha-Shaḥar," Prague, 1789; this is a plagiarism of Baruch Lindau's text-book of geography, natural science, etc., which had been published the year previously atBerlin under the title "Reshit Limmudim." Another book, on religious ethics, which he called "Nezer ha-Ḳodesh," Ofen, 1831, is a plagiarism of Jehiel ben Jekuthiel Anaw's (Jew. Encyc. i. 567) "Ma'alot ha-Middot" (Cremona, 1556). He further wrote: "Har ha-Karmel," novellæ on the laws, in the Yoreh De'ah, of menstruation and ritual bath (Prague, 1812). Ezekiel Landau censured him very severely for his vanity in assuming pompous titles on the title-page of his first book. The family name Oppenheim he seems to have adopted from his father-in-law, Löb Oppenheim, rabbi in Freistadt.

D.