MANDELSTAMM, BENJAMIN

(1805-86)

Lithuanian Hebrew author, brother ofLeon Mandelstamm. He was born in Zagare. In the 1840s he settled in Vilnius, where he adopted an extremist stance in Haskalah circles in which he moved. Critical of Russian Jewish life, he advocated governmental intervention to forbid the printing of the Talmud, removed kabbalistic and Hasidic works from circu-lation, and dissolved the traditional heder system.