"Sefer beer Moshe" by Moshe Sertels, son of Isachar, as an example of a bilingual text for the study of the Torah

Moshe Sertels was a son of Issachar and Sarah. He was born circa mid-16th century in Prague. He was a teacher and worked as a translator and exegete. Sertels wrote several texts that attracted wide interest. One of them was a work titled Sefer Beer Moshe, a bilingual commentary on the Torah and five megillot. The construction of the text, its clarity and intelligibility, made it an excellent tool for teaching the Torah in cheders (e.g. such usage of this text was noted in the books of the Cracovian brotherhood Talmud Torah). The article presents the figure of the author and his literary oeuvre with particular focus on the Sefer Beer Moshe as a work that served generations of Ashkenazi Jews to enhance their knowledge of the Torah. The author discusses characteristics of the text and underlines several issues in regard to the Yiddish language in the form that was used in Prague at the turn of the 17th century.