BICK, JACOB SAMUEL:

By: Isidore Singer, Peter Wiernik

Austrian author; born in the eighteenth century; died in Brody, 1831. He was a satirical writer of force and ability, and one of the ablest pioneers of the "haskalah" (culture) movement among the Jews of Galicia. His contributions to the "Bikkure ha-'Ittim," "Kerem Ḥemed," and other Hebrew publications of his time contain strong pleas for the spread of secular knowledge and industry among the Galician Hebrews; and, like all his contemporaries among the Maskilim or progressionists, he was strongly in favor of agricultural pursuits by Jews. He died of cholera in 1831 and left several manuscript works, both in prose and poetry, which were burned in the great conflagration in Brody in the spring of 1835, when the house of his son-in-law, Isaac Rothenberg, was totally destroyed. Bick was highly respected for his piety, learning, and ability; and the destruction of his literary remains was at the time deplored as a great loss.

S. P. Wi.