Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World
Subject: Jewish Studies
Executive Editor: Norman A. Stillman
The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online (EJIW) is the first cohesive and discreet reference work which covers the Jews of Muslim lands particularly in the late medieval, early modern and modern periods. The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online is updated with newly commissioned articles, illustrations, multimedia, and primary source material.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online (EJIW) is the first cohesive and discreet reference work which covers the Jews of Muslim lands particularly in the late medieval, early modern and modern periods. The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online is updated with newly commissioned articles, illustrations, multimedia, and primary source material.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Baradānī, Joseph al-
(523 words)
Joseph al-Baradānī was a payṭan (liturgical poet) and a cantor in tenth-century Baghdad. His father, Ḥayyim, had also been a poet and cantor, and so too were his son Nahum al-Baradānī and at least one grandson, Solomon. As indicated by his nisba (attributive name) the family was based at some point in the Baghdad suburb of Baradān, though by Joseph’s time it had moved into the city proper, where he served with distinction as cantor of the main synagogue—in fact, in a letter Hay Gaon refers to him, post-mortem, as “the great cantor” (Heb. ha-ḥazzan ha-gadol). Joseph’s corpus of liturgical…
Date: 2015-09-03
Baradānī, Nahum al-
(689 words)
Nahum al-Baradānī flourished in the second half of the tenth century and the first decade of the eleventh as the third (at least) in a line of poets and cantors. As indicated by his name, the family must once have been based in the Baghdad suburb of Baradān, but this would have been before the time of Nahum’s father, Joseph, who served as the “Great Cantor” in Baghdad’s central synagogue. Although his main occupation seems to have been as a merchant—and a quite wealthy one, at that—Nahum is know…
Date: 2015-09-03
Barazani (Barzani), Asenath
(391 words)
Asenath Barazani (d. ca. 1670) was the daughter of Samuel ben Nethanel ha-Levi (1560?–1625/1635?), an eminent rabbi, scholar, and mystic who strove to improve the level of Jewish learning and leadership in his native Kurdistan. He founded a yeshiva in Mosul where he trained a generation of scholars who went on to educate communities throughout the country. His two most outstanding students were his daughter Asenath, whom he taught because he had no sons, and Jacob Mizraḥi, who later became her husband. Because Asenath was such a fine scholar, her father was protective of her …
Barcelona
(626 words)
Barcelona (Ar. Barshilūna) was one of the most important commercial ports on the northeastern coast of Spain during the Middle Ages. There are references to the Jewish community of Barcelona as early as the ninth century, but its history is best documented during the period of the Crown of Aragon. The Arabs ruled the city during the eighth century, but it returned to Christian control in the ninth (801). Although the period of Muslim rule was quite brief -only three generations- there was constant contact with al-Andalus. After the destruction by al-Manṣūr ibn Abī ʿĀmir (Almanzor) in …
Bardavit, Beki
(281 words)
Beki Bardavid, born in Istanbul in 1936, is a Turkish language instructor, writer, and translator. She graduated from Lycée Notre Dame de Sion in Istanbul, and subsequently obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in French Language and Literature from Istanbul University Faculty of Literature in 1980. After teaching French at Lycée Saint-Michel in Istanbul for some time, Bardavid got her second Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Spanish Language and Literature from Istanbul University Faculty of Literature in 1998. In addition to her books, Bardavid has written articles a…
Bargeloni, Isaac ben Reuben, al-
(343 words)
Rabbi Isaac ben Reuben al-Bargeloni was born in 1043, most probably in Barcelona, as his nisba(attributive name) asserts. According to M. E. Barjau and T. Calders he died in 1113. Documents from the Cairo Geniza describe him as a pupil of Ḥanokh ben Moses, whose lessons he probably attended while a student in Cordova. Al-Bargeloni was dayyan in Denia during the reign of the Slavic taifa king Mujāhid (r. 1014–1044/45). Abraham Ibn Da'ud states in Sefer ha-Qabbala that he was related by marriage to the powerful Ibn Lakhtush family. He was also an ancestor of Naḥmanides, and according to Simeon …
Barīd al-Yawmī (Baghdad), al-
(291 words)
The Iraqi newspaper al-Barīd al-Yawmī (Daily Mail) was nominally edited by a Muslim, Hāshim al-Bannā, but most of its writers and all the members of its editorial board were Jewish intellectuals, most notably Edward Shā’ul (Suhīl Ibrāhīm) and Mīr Mu‘allim (1921–1978). Nissim Rejwan, Ezra Ḥaddād, and Shalom Darwīsh were contributors. The atmosphere in which al-Barīd al-Yawmī came into being was colored by events connected with the conflict in Palestine in 1948. Iraq’s Jews were under attack by the right-wing press, while the affiliation of many radical young Jews w…
Bar Kokhba Society (Cairo)
(333 words)
The Bar Kokhba Society was founded in Cairo in February 1897 by Joseph Marco Baruch, a native of Turkey and graduate of the Universities of Paris and Bern, who arrived in Egypt in 1896. The society was the first Zionist organization in Egypt and in the Islamic world as a whole, and thus was the focal point of Zionist activism in Egypt at the turn of the twentieth century. The elected council of Bar Kokhba, headed by Jacques Harmalin, was made up entirely of Ashkenazi Jews belonging to the middle and lower classes. When its early efforts to recruit non-Ashkenazi members proved u…
Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah
(1,628 words)
1. Bar Mitzvah The Bar Mitzvah (Heb. son of the commandment) ceremony and its rituals as celebrated by the Jewish communities in the lands of Islam differed significantly from the better-known ceremony developed by European Jewry in the Ashkenazi world. Unlike the other major ceremonies of the Jewish life-cycle, Bar Mitzvah is not mentioned in the Torah, and even in texts from the talmudic era there is no indication that the day a boy reached the age of thirteen was celebrated as a festive event, although this age (plus a day) marked his legal maturity. The Mishna states that “at thirteen …
Bar-Moshe, Yiṣḥaq
(479 words)
Born in 1927, Yiṣḥaq Bar-Moshe grew up in a middle-class religious family in Baghdad. After graduating from the Jewish community’s Rahil Shahmoun School, he attended a government high school before studying law at the Baghdad Law College. Briefly involved with the Communist movement, Bar-Moshe subsequently affiliated with the Zionist underground. Arriving in Israel during the mass exodus, he was housed in a transit camp (Heb. maʿabara) for three years. In 1958, he joined the Israeli Arabic broadcasting station, becoming head of its political department, before founding Al-Anbāʾ, …
Barnatán, Marcos Ricardo
(430 words)
Marcos Ricardo Barnatán is an Argentine-born writer of Syrian parentage who has resided in Madrid since 1965. His central concerns include Kabbala, other mystical and occult systems, the Sephardic past, and Jorge Luis Borges. Marcos Ricardo Barnatán is a prolific and wide-ranging Argentine-Spanish creative writer, cultural critic, biographer, and student of Jewish mysticism. He was born on December 14, 1946 in Buenos Aires into a Sephardic family whose ancestors had settled in Syria following the expulsion from Spain. Sephardic …
Barouh, N. Izidor
(326 words)
N. İzidor Barouhwas born in Istanbul in 1915. In 1932, at the age of seventeen, he joined Turkey’s first advertising agency, İlancılıkLtd., as a customer representative. He rose quickly up the ranks and within a year ended up owning the majority of the company’s shares. Although the business depended solely on newspaper ads at the beginning, Barouh brought limitless dynamism to the Turkish advertising sector, adapting competitively and amenably to new market conditions, such as the use of radio and later television. His clients include such giants as the C…
Barouh, Yakup
(283 words)
Yakup Barouh is a Turkish advertising executive and a leader of the Jewish community. Born in Istanbul on February 7, 1945, he graduated from Robert College with an M.A. in marketing. He is a partner and executive vice president of Ilancilik Advertising Agency, the oldest advertising agency in Turkey, founded in 1909. He is also general secretary of the Executive Committee of the Turkish Advertising Agency Association and a member of the Turkish Advertising Self-Regulation Board. Barouh first began to work with Turkish Jewish community youth organizations in 1962. A mem…
Bar Saṭya, Joseph ben Jacob
(504 words)
In the famous Epistle of Sherira Gaon (Heb. Iggeret Rav Sherira Ga’on), Joseph ben Jacob is described as “a son of geonim, grandson of the officiants, the priests,” from which it has now been established that Joseph’s father was Jacob ha-Kohen ben Naṭronay (not Jacob ben Mordechai, as per Ibn Da'ud in his Book of Tradition), the gaon of Sura from around 911 to 924. Joseph was appointed gaon of Sura in 930 by the exilarch David ben Zakkay I in apparent retaliation against the presiding gaon, Saʿadya ben Joseph, for his support of the a…
Date: 2015-09-03
Bar, Shlomo
(648 words)
Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1943, Shlomo Bar (né Ben Ghoush) moved to Israel with his family in 1948, settling in the village of Be’er Yaʿacov, near Ramla. He dropped out of school at an early age and worked in construction, but sang and played the drums in his free time, absorbing the many musical traditions of the settlers in the Ramla vicinity (notably those from India). His breakthrough occurred in 1976 when he performed his own songs in Joshua Sobol’s Kriza (Heb. Crisis), a seminal play about the social discrimination against mizraḥi (Heb. oriental) Jews in Israel. A year later in 1977,…
Barukh, Marco
(399 words)
Marco (Joseph Marcou) Barukh, an early apostle of pre-Herzlian Zionism in the Muslim world, was born in Constantinople in 1872. He studied at several European universities and because of his involvement in radical student groups was under police surveillance for much of his brief adult life. His involvement with Jewish nationalism began in 1893 when he joined the Kadimah student association in Vienna. The following year he was in Algeria, where he tried to propagate the Jewish national idea among the rapidly assimilating Algerian Jews. He published a short-lived journal, Le Juge, bu…
Basola, Moses
(771 words)
An Italian Jewish sage descended from a French family, Moses Basola (1480–1560) lived in several different cities in central and northern Italy. From the age of nine he resided in Soncino, where his father, Mordechai Basola, was employed as a proofreader by the Joshua Soncino press. At an unknown date, Basola moved to Pesaro, where he was employed as a teacher and tutor in the household of the eminent banker Moses Nissim of Foligno; he also spent time as a teacher in Fano. In 1535 or shortly thereafter, Basola received rabbinical ordination from Azriel Diena in Sabionetta. He then moved to Anco…
Basra
(1,885 words)
Basra (Ar. al-Baṣra) is a city in southern Iraq on the Shatt al-Arab waterway formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It lies 420 kilometers (279 miles) southeast of Baghdad. The site of the town has moved somewhat since the Middle Ages. The present site (New Basra) dates back to the eighteenth century. 1. Medieval Period The Jewish community of Basra was one of the oldest and most prosperous in Iraq. Although most studies of Iraqi Jewry tend to focus on the Baghdadi community, Basran Jews played an important role in Iraq and throu…
Baṣrī, Me'ir (Mīr)
(675 words)
Meir (Mīr) Baṣrī was born in Baghdad in 1911 and died in London on January 4, 2006. The scion of two distinguished families of rabbis and businessmen, the Baṣrīs and the Dangoors, he was the last president of the Jewish Community in Iraq. As the one of the older generation of Jewish officials and businessmen who considered themselves to be Iraqi patriots, he remained in Iraq until forced into exile in 1974 by the Baʿath regime Baṣrī was educated at the Alliance School in Baghdad, where he studied French, English, and Hebrew. Later he privately studied economics and cont…
Bassan Yeḥiel
(238 words)
Jehiel ben Ḥayyim Bassan was born into a Romaniot family in Rhodes in 1550, and moved to Istanbul in the 1580s after his wife died. He became one of the prominent rabbis of the city, and possibly also the head ( av bet din) of its rabbinical court during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Together with Elijah Mizraḥi, Bassan disagreed with Samuel de Medina in a controversy over the right of a majority to impose its will upon the minority with regard to a communal ordinance (Heb. haskama) that had negative financial consequences for the minority. Bassan held that it was im…
Batna
(497 words)
Once featuring a substantial Jewish population, Batna is a relatively new Algerian city nestled into a break in the Aures Mountains of northeastern Algeria a little over 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Constantine. It lies in the middle of the Chaouia Berber region. Although now rapidly growing, Batna began as an unpromising settlement around a French military encampment during the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s. It was declared a city in 1848, and was already home to a Jewish population of thirty-si…
B (Bā Aḥmad (grand vizier, Morocco) - Bagratids (Bagrationi) dynasty)
(1,597 words)
Bā Aḥmad (grand vizier, Morocco), Corcos, Joshua ben Hayyim, Ohana, Jacob Ba-Yeshishim Ḥokhma: Arba‘im Sippure ‘Am mi-pi Yehude Iran-Paras (Wisdom Is Among the Elderly: Forty Folktales from the Jews of Iran-Persia, Ḥanina Mizraḥi), Ḥanina Mizrahi Ba‘al ha-Battim (Master of the Houses) seeḤamawī, Abraham Ba‘al Shem Tov, Israel (the Besht), Mysticism Baalbek (Lebanon), Jewish community in, leadership of, Lebanon ba‘ale miqra (masters of, or adherents to, the Hebrew Scripture), Benjamin al-Nahāwandī Ba‘ale Rivi She‘u (poem by Abraham ibn Ezra in honor of Barukh ibn Ja…
B (Bahaism - Barāl, Azīza)
(1,457 words)
Bahaism, Bahaism, Conversion to conversion of Jews to, Bahaism, Conversion to, Iran/Persia, Kashan, Hamadan, Kirmanshah, Mysticism/Sufism (Iran) forced, in Iran, Tehran in Shiraz, Shiraz Jewish adeherents of, Bahaism, Conversion to, Conversion, Isfahan Jewish campaign against, Mizraḥi, Mullāh Ḥayyim Eleazar in Palestine, Bahaism, Conversion to Bahar, Beki Luiza, Bahar, Beki L. Bahar, Ivet, Bahar, Ivet Bahar, Mois, Bahar, Mois Bahā’ullahseeNūrī, Mīrzā Hụsayn ‘Alī Bahbout, Shabtai, Beirut Baḥīrā, Polemics (Muslim-Jewish) Bahloul, Joëlle, Academic Study of …
B (Baransel, Nil - Beit She’an (Israel): scholars in)
(1,591 words)
Baransel, Nil, Acıman, Eli Barasch, Judah Julius, Bucharest Barāsh (Yemen), Sanʿa Barazani, Asenath, Kurdistan, Mosul, Kurdish (Neo-Aramaic) Literature, Kurdish (Neo-Aramaic) Literature, Barazani (Barzani), Asenath Barazani, Muṣṭafā, Kurdistan Barazani, Nathaniel, Kurdistan Barazani (Barzani) family, Kurdistan, Mosul Barbarossa, ‘Arūj, Algeria Barbarossa, Khayr al-Dīn, Algeria Barcelona Jewish community in, Perfet, Isaac ben Sheshet, Tarragona, Barcelona Muslim rule of, Barcelona Bardavid, Beki, Bardavit, Beki Barefoot (music album, Habrera Hativeet), …
B (Beit Zilkha Yeshiva (Baghdad) - Bendjelloul, Mohamed Salah)
(2,113 words)
Beit Zilkha Yeshiva (Baghdad), Iraq Beja, Isaac ben Moses, Beja, Isaac Ben Moses Béja (Portugal), Muslim conquest of, Muslim conquests and the Jews Béja (Tunisia), Jewish community in, Béja Béjaïa (Algeria), Jewish community in, Béjaïa (Bougie, Bijāya) Bejaoui, Joseph, Kol Siyyon (La Voix de Sion) (Tunis) Bejerano, Bekhor Ḥayyim Moşe (Moses) (1846–1931), Edirne (Adrianople), Haham Başı (Chief Rabbi), Millet, Ottoman Empire, Turkish Republic, Bejerano (Becerano), Bekhor Hayyim, Guéron, Angèle, Italian Synagogue, Galata, Istanbul, Saban, Rafael David Bekache, Shalom, Beka…
B (Bene Aharon (The Sons of Aaron, Aaron Lapapa) - Bet Aharon Synagogue (Skopje))
(1,676 words)
Bene Aharon (The Sons of Aaron, Aaron Lapapa), Lapapa, Aaron Ben Isaac Bene Binyamin ve-Qerev Ish (The Sons of Benjamin and the Inner [Thought] of [Every] Man, Benjamin Navon), Navon family bene ‘edot ha-mizraḥ (members of the ‘edot from the East), usage of term, Mizraḥim (‘Edot ha-Mizraḥ; names of Mizraḥim in Israel) Bene Israel (Children of Israel) Jews, India, India in Bombay, Bombay (present day Mumbai) in Maharashtra, Pakistan Bene Israel (Children of Israel) party (Ottoman Empire), Nahoum (Nahum), Haim (Ḥayyim) Bene Melakhim (The Sons of Kings, Eliahou Raphael Marcian…
B (Bet Av (House of the Father, Isaac ben Shabbetai ‘Antebi) - Binyan Na‘arim (Upbuilding of Youth, Amram ben Judah Elbaz))
(1,929 words)
Bet Av (House of the Father, Isaac ben Shabbetai ‘Antebi), ʿAntebi (Antibi) Family bet din seerabbinic courts bet din gadol (grand/central rabbinic court), Berab, Jacob Bet Dino shel Shelmo(Solomon’s Court, Raphael Solomon Laniado), Kassin Family Bet El kabbalists, Meyuḥas Family, Palestine, Abbadi, Mordechai, Farḥi, Isaac, Azriel, Aaron, Sharʿabi, Abraham Shalom Aleppo wing of, Duwayk (Douek, Dweck), Ḥayyim Saul charters of fellowship of, Bet El Kabbalists contemplative prayer of, Bet El Kabbalists influences of Mish‘an on, Mishʿan, Elijah leadership of, Algazi fa…
B (biographies - Boujad (Morocco): synagogues)
(1,351 words)
biographies of Ezra ha-Bavli, Ezra ha-Bavli Hebrew, Literature, Hebrew Prose (medieval) of Maimonides, Moses, Maimonides, Moses Biqqur Ḥolim synagogue (Izmir), Izmir, Synagogues in the Islamic World Bir Şehre Gidememek (Inaccessible City, Mario Levi), Levi, Mario bird motifs as decorations on marriage contracts ( ketubbot), Ketubba Artistic Traditions in jewelry, Jewelry Smithing Birkat Avraham (Abraham’s Blessing, Abraham ben Moses Maimonides), Maimonides, Abraham ben Moses, Daniel ben Saʿadya ha-Bavli birth rates, of Jews in Turkey, Turkish Republic birth ritual…
B (Boujenah, Matthieu - Bülbüli, Isaac)
(1,241 words)
Boujenah, Matthieu, Cinema, Arabic, Jews in Boujenah, Michel, Cinema, French, North African Jewish Actors and Characters in, France, Boujenah, Michel Boukhobza, Chochana, Francophone Maghrebi Jewish Literature Boumendil, Rosine seeRhaïs, Elissa Bourguiba, Habib, Monastir (Tunisia), Tunis, Tunisia, Cohen-Hadria, Elie, Tunis Riots (1967) Bouzaglo, David, Music, Bouzaglo (Buzaglo), David Bouzaglo, Ḥayyim, Bouzaglo (Buzaglo), Ḥayyim Bouzaglo, Mordecai, Mysticism, Draa (Dar‘a) Bouzet, Charles du, Anti-Judaism/Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism Bouzid, Nouri, Cinema, A…
Béchar (Colomb-Béchar)
(527 words)
Colomb-Béchar(today simply Béchar, Ar. Bashshār) is located 725 km south of Oran near the Moroccan border. It served as the state-capital of the French department Saoura, created by a decree of August 7, 1957. It is an important road and railroad node that was also the gate to the Sahara. The town was created from a conglomeration of villages along the banks of the Oued Bechar (Wādī Bashshār), when the French under General Hubert Lyautey occupied it in November 1903. A few Jews had been living in the ksar of Béchar where they worked asjewelers, blacksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, pe…
Bedel-i Askeri
(330 words)
The bedel-i askeri (military exemption tax) was a revamped version of the Ottoman poll tax (cizye, Ar. jizya; see Taxation and Dhimma) that was adopted during the Tanzimat period. Until the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth century, non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire were not allowed to do military service in the army, which was considered to be a Muslim institution, some important exceptions notwithstanding. The Islahat Fermanı (Reform Decree) of 1856, however, provided legal equality to all Ottomans regardless of religion and br…
Behar, Cem
(248 words)
Cem Behar, born into an illustrious Sephardi family in Istanbul in 1946, is an economist and a musician. He received his high school education at RobertCollege, and his baccalaureate and master’s degree from the University of Paris. Behar completed his Ph.D. in demography and economics at the Université de Paris–I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He then taught as a visiting professor at Paris and Cambridge universities. From 1988 to 1994 and again from 1998 to 2001, he was head of the Department of Economics at Boğaziçi (Bosporus) University in Istanbul. Since 2004, he has been provost and …
Béhar, Nissim
(828 words)
Born in Jerusalem in 1848, Nissim Béhar moved with his family to Istanbul, where he attended the Camondo School. Adolphe Crémieux took note of him during a visit to the school and arranged for him to go to Paris, where he became a member of the first class to graduate from the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO), established by the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) in 1867 to train teachers for its school system in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Over the next few years he directed AIU schools in Syria, Bulgaria, and Istanbul. In 1882 Nissim Béhar founded the Torah u-Melakha prima…
Béhar, Rachel
(301 words)
Rachel Béhar Stein, an outstanding principal in the Alliance Israélite Universelle educational network, was born in Jerusalem in 1859 during the Ottoman period. Her father was an itinerant rabbi with a mystical bent; her mother was a descendant of the eighteenth-century kabbalist Isaac Luria of Safed. Along with her brother Nissim (1848–1930) and her sister Fortunée (Fortuna; 1860–1929), she was one of the first Sephardi students to enroll in the teacher-training program of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. In 1872, Rachel Béhar and her sister began their studies at the Institut B…
Behmoaras, Lizi
(197 words)
Liz Behmoaras is a Jewish author, translator, journalist, and columnist in Turkey. She was born in Istanbul in 1950. After graduating from the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, she began translating books from French to Turkish. Among the famous authors whose works she translated were Simone de Beauvoir, Marie Cardinal, and Paul Valéry. Behmoaras edited the culture page of the Turkish Jewish newspaper Şalom (Shalom) from 1986 to 1996. She has written columns for the Turkish newspapers Yeni Yüzyıl and Cumhuriyet, as well as the French newspapers Liberation,L’Arche, and Le Tribune Juive, and ha…
Beirut
(1,353 words)
1. Late Antiquity to Early Modern Times Although an organized community did not really develop until the nineteenth century, Jews have lived in small numbers in Beirut since late Antiquity and a synagogue may have existed there as early as the sixth century CE. The Megillat Evyatar (Scroll of Abiathar) relates that the Jewish community of Beirut was under the control of David ben Daniel in the late eleventh century. In the 1170s, the Spanish Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela noted that there were approximately fifty Jews living in Beirut, but the community was appare…
Béja
(414 words)
Béja (Ar. Bāja) is a town in the north of Tunisia about 97 kilometers (60 miles) west of Tunis in the fertile Medjerda Valley. In ancient times, it was the site of a Roman colony called Vaga, and was the central wheat-growing region and breadbasket of Tunisia; hence its appellation throughout the medieval period was Bājat al-Qamḥ (Ar. Béja of Grain). In the modern period, the French built a new residential quarter for French settlers who worked on large farms in the area. Jews likely first came to the town in the seventeenth century, mostly from Algeria. One of t…
Béjaïa (Bougie, Bijāya)
(549 words)
Béjaïa (Fr. Bougie; Cl. Ar. Bijāya) is a town on the Algerian coast about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Algiers and west of Greater Kabylia. It became an important city and port when the Ḥammādid dynasty (1015–1152) moved its capital there in 1067. Jews from Qal‘at Banī Ḥammād, the former Ḥammādid capital, likely followed, as evidenced by a reference to a Jewish community in Béjaïa that was persecuted during the Almohad conquest of the city in 1152. The town is also mentioned in a number of documents from the Cairo Geniza, but always in a general context without specific referen…
Beja, Isaac Ben Moses
(128 words)
Isaac ben Moses Beja (d. 1628) was a preacher in several congregations in Salonica, and in his later years taught in the yeshiva of Nikopol (Nigbolu). In addition to homilies, eulogies, and poems, his published works include Bayit Neʾeman (A Faithful House), published in Venice in 1621, and a homily on the building of the synagogue of Nikopol entitled Keter Torah (Crown of the Torah), printed as a section of Le-Ohave Leshon ʿEver (For Lovers of the Hebrew Language) in 1628 in Paris. Two other individuals named Isaac Beja are known to have lived in Salonica. One died in 1635, the other in 1734. Le…
Bejerano (Becerano), Bekhor Hayyim
(466 words)
Bekhor Ḥayyim Moşe Bejerano, born in Eski Zagra (now Stara Zagora), Bulgaria, in 1846, was a respected scholar and the chief rabbi of the Turkish Republic from 1920 to 1931. From a very early age, he was educated in traditional Talmud Torahs and yeshivas. He also studied foreign languages and many other secular subjects, and ultimately became fluent in more than fifteen languages. In 1880, Bejerano moved to Ottoman-ruled Rusçuk (Ruse), Bulgaria, where the students he taught included a future historian of Ottoman Jewry, Solomon Rosanes. Bejerano …
Bekache, Shalom
(442 words)
Rabbi Shalom Bekache (also Beccache), author, publisher, and exponent of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala), was born in Bombay in 1848 and died in Algiers in 1927. His father, Isaac Raphael, called Bekhash, had moved to India from Baghdad (Post Medieval). Shalom was educated and given his rabbinical ordination in Safed, Palestine. In 1878, after serving as a rabbi in Acre (Akko), he moved to Algeria, where he served as a rabbi first in a small community for four years, and then, until 1922, in the Ben Tuwwa congregation in Algiers. Bekache was typical of adherents of the Haskala movement i…
Bekemoharar Family
(518 words)
The Bekemoharar family of rabbis and scholars was descended from Menahem ben Isaac Ashkenazi (1666–1733), who was born in Timişoara (Temesvár) near the border between present-day Romania and Serbia. His family moved to Edirne (Adrianople) in the heartland of the Ottoman Empire when he was two years old. When the chief rabbi of Edirne, Abraham ben Isaac Ṣarfati, died in 1722, the city’s thirteen congregations could not agree on a candidate to replace him. Seven congregations favored the late rabbi’s son-in-law Abraham Geron (d. 1751), but the other six chose Ashkenazi as thei…
Belaïche, Jacques
(351 words)
Jacques Bellaïche was born in Tunis on July 17, 1913. While working as a sales clerk he joined the Youth Hostel movement in its formative years. Later he joined the union movement during the period of the Popular Front (1936–1937) and was active in the Communist Party. He was arrested in April 1940 for distributing copies of the subversive newspaper L’Avenir Social, held in the civil prison of Tunis, and then moved to the military prison of Algiers. His case was dismissed in July 1941, after sixteen months in prison. He was arrested again on November 28, …
Belgium
(693 words)
The Jews of Belgium represent approximately 32,000 people out of a population of 10.4 million. The largest part of this community lives in Brussels and Antwerp, with over fifteen thousand in each city. Belgian Jews with origins in Islamic countries number around two thousand. The first Sephardim to settle in Belgium were Turkish Jews toward the end of the nineteenth century. The influx from Turkey continued until the 1920s. Those who settled in Antwerp worked in the diamond business and founded a community in 1898. In 1913, they built a synagogue with the financial support of the Bel…
Belgrade
(934 words)
Belgrade (Serb. Beograd; Ott. Turk. Belghād, and occasionally Belghād Üngürüz to distinguish it from other Balkan towns with the same name) is a city in southeastern Europe, situated at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, and the capital of Serbia. Jews have lived in Belgrade at least since the period immediately following the Black Death (1346–1350). In 1376, Ashkenazi Jews expelled from Hungary moved there. They were later joined by Jews from Bavaria (1470) and Italy, many of the lat…
Bénabou, Marcel
(533 words)
The French historian and writer Marcel Bénabou was born in Meknès, Morocco, on June 29, 1939, to an observant Sephardi family. A brilliant student at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school, he left Morocco and religious practice in 1956 to study in Paris and was a student at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure. He later became a professor of ancient history at the University of Paris7—Denis Diderot and authored a number of scholarly works, most notably La résistance africaine à la romanisatio n (1976). In addition to his academic career, Bénabou is also a novelist and …
Benaioun (Ben Ayoun), Salomon
(191 words)
Salomon Benaioun (Ben Ayoun) (d. 1921) was a printer from Oran who, at the request of Haïm Benchimol settled in Tangier at the end of the nineteenth century to publish Le Reveil du Maroc . He also published the newspaper Le Moghrabi to defend Jewish interests. In June 1915, in addition to operating his printing house in Tangier (Imprimerie Française du Maroc), he managed the weekly La Liberté/El Horria, which was published in French and Judeo-Arabic. This newspaper was founded during World War I, and was supported by the French government, which had a stake in c…
Benamozegh, Elijah b. Abraham
(649 words)
Elijah Benamozegh was born in Livorno (Leghorn), Italy, on April 24, 1823 into a family of wealthy merchants and rabbis. His parents, Abraham and Clara, were originally from Fez, Morocco. His father, who was seventy-one years old when Elijah was born, died when the child was three. Under the guidance of his maternal uncle, Judah Coriat (see Coriat Family ), Elijah undertook traditional Jewish biblical and rabbinic studies; at a very early age he also began the study of Kabbala, especially the Zohar. Forced to enter the world of business to earn a living, Benamozegh worked in …
Benardete, Maír José
(909 words)
Maír José Benardete (Mair José Benardete; M. J. Benadete; Meyer Benardete; Mercedes Benardete; 1895–1989), the eldest of nine children, was born in the Ottoman Empire in the city of Çanakkale to a Ladino-speaking family. At the age of eight, he contracted a serious illness that left him unable to walk for months. He spent his year-long convalescence among the Sephardic women of his community, absorbing the Judeo-Spanish folklore and language that would later serve as a focus of his scholarship. After recovering, he enrolled in the Alliance Israélite Universelle school, whe…
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