In 1868 he was appointed teacher at the government Jewish school at
Zakroczym,
Warsaw Governorate, and in 1870 he became principal of the government Jewish school of
Płock,
Suwałki Governorate. He was also instructor in Judaism at the
gymnasium in the latter town. Paperna was intimately connected with the Russian
Haskalah movement in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and contributed various books and articles to Russian as well as to Hebrew literature. His first Hebrew poem,
Emet ve-Emunah, appeared in
Ha-Karmel in 1863; Paperna was a steady contributor to that periodical as well as to
Ha-Melitz. Critical articles by him, entitled
Kankan ḥadash male’ yashan (in
Ha-Karmel, 1867, and printed separately in Vilna), attracted wide attention in the circles of the
Maskilim. In these articles Paperna, influenced probably by the Russian critic
Dmitry Pisarev, adopted modern realistic methods of criticism. He argued against pseudo-classicism in Hebrew literature, and the "guess-philology" in the commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud. He also ridiculed the presumption of some of the young
Maskilim, who from a desire for fame attempted to write books in Hebrew on botany, astronomy, and the other
exact sciences, with which they were entirely unfamiliar. An essay on drama entitled
Ha-Drama bi-khelal veha-‘ivrit bi-ferat appeared as a supplement to
Ha-Melitz in 1867. It attracted harsh criticism from
Abraham Dob Bär Lebensohn in his pamphlet
Tokaḥti la-Beḳarim, written under the pseudonym "S. Friedman" (Paperna had attacked Lebensohn's
Emet ve-Emunah), and from
Joshua Steinberg (
En Mishpat). In 1869 Paperna published an article on the
Russification of Jews in
Congress Poland, entitled
K yevreiskomu voprosu v Vislyanskom kraye ('On the Jewish question in the Vistula Land', in
Den, No. 13). Among his articles on education may be mentioned
O khederakh voobshche (Płock, 1884), on the
chadorim. Memoirs (
Zikhronot) by Paperna on the rabbinical school of Zhitomir and its professors appeared in Sokolov's
Sefer ha-Shanah (1900, p. 60). ==Publications==