Wikipedia's first sentence called it “a 19th century russian jewish intellectual and lawyer”. Today it says “a 19th-century russian jewish intellectual”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now.Red text: written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot.1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005
Osip Mikhailovich Lerner was a 19th century Russian Jewish intellectual and lawyer. Originally a maskil —a propagator of the Haskala , or "Jewish Enlightenment"—he later converted to Christianity and wrote a book denouncing Jews.1[Adler, 1999, 200] In 1881 , shortly after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II , Lerner leased the Mariinsky Theater in Odessa , Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia ) to present Yiddish theater . He first presented plays by N.M. Sheikevitch and Moshe Leib Lilienblum , then was the first to present classic European theater in Yiddish , translating the material but not radically altering it or adding songs. He was the first to present Yiddish-language productions of Karl Gutzkow 's Uriel Acosta and Eugène Scribe 's La Juive . Jacob Adler , in his memoir, remarks that "both were works on Jewish subjects and both were in the repertoire of every important European stage of the time." [Adler, 1999, 200]2
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 17214651.
The opening as it stood in 2010
Osip Mikhailovich Lerner was a 19th century Russian Jewish intellectual and lawyer. Originally a maskil —a propagator of the Haskala , or "Jewish Enlightenment"—he later converted to Christianity and wrote a book denouncing Jews. [Adler, 1999, 200] In 1881, shortly after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II , Lerner leased the Mariinsky Theater in Odessa , Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia ) to present Yiddish theater . He first presented plays by N.M. Sheikevitch and Moshe Leib Lilienblum , then was the first to present classic European theater in Yiddish , translating the material but not radically altering it or adding songs. He was the first to present Yiddish-language productions of Karl Gutzkow 's Uriel Acosta and Eugène Scribe 's La Juive . Jacob Adler , in his memoir, remarks that "both were works on Jewish subjects and both were in the repertoire of every important European stage of the time." [Adler, 1999, 200]
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 331196033.
The opening as it stood in 2015
Osip Mikhailovich Lerner (1847-1907) was a 19th-century Russian Jewish intellectual and lawyer. Originally a maskil —a propagator of the Haskala , or "Jewish Enlightenment"—he later converted to Christianity and wrote a book denouncing Jews. [Adler, 1999, 200] In 1881, shortly after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II , Lerner leased the Mariinsky Theater in Odessa , Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia ) to present Yiddish theater . He first presented plays by N.M. Sheikevitch and Moshe Leib Lilienblum , then was the first to present classic European theater in Yiddish , translating the material but not radically altering it or adding songs. He was the first to present Yiddish-language productions of Karl Gutzkow 's Uriel Acosta and Eugène Scribe 's La Juive . Jacob Adler , in his memoir, remarks that "both were works on Jewish subjects and both were in the repertoire of every important European stage of the time." [Adler, 1999, 200]
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 611997050.
The opening as it stood in 2020 5 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
(Yosef Yehuda) Lerner , was a 19th-century Russian Jewish intellectual, writer, and critic.Originally a maskil —a propagator of the Haskala , or "Jewish Enlightenment"—he became a pioneer in the fields of Yiddish theater and folklore, as well as literary criticism.Zylbercweig notes that the scholar Sh.Borovoy gives Lerner's birthdate as 1 January 1849.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 962088239.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023
(Yosef Yehuda) Lerner , was a 19th-century Russian Jewish intellectual, writer, and critic. Originally a maskil —a propagator of the Haskala , or "Jewish Enlightenment"—he became a pioneer in the fields of Yiddish theater and folklore, as well as literary criticism. Zylbercweig notes that the scholar Sh. Borovoy gives Lerner's birthdate as 1 January 1849.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1145234081. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “a 19th century russian jewish intellectual and lawyer”. Today it says “a 19th-century russian jewish intellectual”. Read the current article and compare.
2005
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.
What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
a 19th century russian jewish intellectual and lawyer
Now
a 19th-century russian jewish intellectual
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
