10 Facts About Isaac Kaminer

Isaac ben Abraham Kaminer was a Russian-Jewish Hebrew-language poet, satirist, and physician.

Isaac ben Abraham Kaminer was born in May 1834 in Levkiev in right-bank Ukraine, near Zhitomir.

Isaac Kaminer rejoined his wife and newborn child in Zhitomir in 1854, where he taught at the government school for Jews until 1859.

Isaac Kaminer studied mathematics and medicine at the University of Kiev, graduating as a physician in 1865.

Russian revolutionary leader Pavel Axelrod, who married Isaac Kaminer's daughter, claimed he first came across Das Kapital in Isaac Kaminer's home.

Isaac Kaminer served as a physician in Kiev until the end of the 1870s.

Isaac Kaminer moved to Monasterishche in the Chernigov Governorate in 1880, where he worked as physician for the governate's administrative council.

Isaac Kaminer was later made a member of a commission for the investigation of the conditions of the Russian Jews, and he so displeased the officials by his impassioned defence of his coreligionists that he was ordered back to the government of Kiev.

In 1901 Isaac Kaminer's health broke down, and he went for medical treatment to Bern, where he died as the result of an operation.

Isaac Kaminer wrote verse satires for the Hebrew socialist papers Ha-Emet and Asefat Hakhamim, criticizing supporters of the Haskalah, the Hasidim, and rich communal leaders.