A merchant, who devoted the greater part of his time to study; lived toward the end of the eighteenth century at Sherwenty, in Lithuania. His devotion to the study of the Talmud was so intense that, according to his grandson, the rabbi of Kamienetz, for twenty years he did not remove his clothes for sleep.
Abelson wrote a methodology of the Mishnah and introductions to the Order of Ḳodashim and Ṭeharot under the title, "Zikron Yehudah" (Judah's Memorial). Only certain parts of the latter work have been published, the introduction to Ṭeharot, under the sub-title "Pitḥe Ṭeharot" (Gates of Purity), Wilna, 1851, and some contributions to a system of the Mishnah and Halakah under the title, "Huḥaḳ le-Zeker" (Engraved for Remembrance), Wilna, 1860.