EHRENKRANZ, BENJAMIN WOLF (also known as Zbarazer):
Galician Yiddish poet; born in Zbaraz, Galicia, about 1812; died about 1882. He spent many years in Rumania and southern Russia, wandering from place to place, and singing his songs, sometimes extemporaneously composed, in cafés and similar resorts. Some of his poems were written down by his hearers, and given to him for revision when he was in better condition for such literary work. He was a real folk-poet, and his songs are still sung by the Jewish masses of Galicia and southernRussia. Some of them are reproduced in Dalman's "Jüdisch-Deutsche Volkslieder aus Galizien und Russland," pp. 29-42, 2d ed., Berlin, 1891.
His first published poem, written in Hebrew and based on a Talmudical parable, appeared in "Kokebe Yiẓḥaḳ," xii. 102-103, Vienna, 1848. His next work, "Ḥazon la-Mo'ed," a satire on the Ḥasidim and their rabbis, is also in Hebrew (Jassy, 1855). His Yiddish songs were published with a Hebrew translation in four parts, under the collective name "Maḳḳel No'am" (Vienna, 1865, and Lemberg, 1869-78). A new edition in Roman characters appeared in Braila, Rumania, 1902 (see "Ha-Meliẓ," v. 42, No. 125). His "Maḳḳel Ḥobelim" (1869) and "Sifte Yeshenah" (1874) appeared in Przemysl.
- L. Wiener, History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 77-80;
- Ha-Shaḥar, ii. 204-206; v. 367, 368.