BONDI, PHILIP (Jacob Koppel):
Austrian rabbi; born at Jinoschitz, Bohemia, Feb. 26, 1830. After having received a good education at home under the care of his father (Samuel), Bondi entered the gymnasium at Prague in 1844, and studied Talmud and Rabbinica under Raphael Schulhof and Solomon J. Rapoport, who in 1852 conferred upon him the title of Morenu. Continuing his philosophical studies, Bondi in 1857 received his doctor's degree from the University of Prague and his rabbinical diploma from Aaron Kornfeld and Daniel Frank, whose yeshibah he had attended.
In the same year he taught at Budweis, and from 1859 to 1868 at Kassejovic. From 1868 to 1876 he was rabbi at Brandeis. Being a strong partizan in the Bohemian movement, he was appointed preacher in the vernacular by the newly founded Jewish-Bohemian society, Or Tamid (Continual Light), at Prague, after whose collapse he became a teacher of religion at the Bohemian Jewish schools, and rabbi at the synagogue founded by Porges.
In 1886 he published five Bohemian sermons under the title "Ḳol Ya'akob" (Voice of Jacob). He also began to publish a Bohemian translation of the Pentateuch.
- Sokolow, Sefer Zikkaron, s.v., Warsaw, 1889.
