Volume 1

The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor.

Date:: 1901-1906

Credit: The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

61/752 (page 13)

$I THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA Aaron ben ^^ayyim Aaron ben Joseph ha-Levi 13 I simply as the “ Preacher ” or “ Censor ”; born in 1738; I died 1771. He was one of the early great rabbis of I the sect who helped the rapid spread of Hasidism in eastern Europe, and was distinguished for the fiery ! eloquence of his exhortations. He died one year , before his master, the great Kabbi Baer of Mez- hirich, and was succeeded by his son, Asher of i Karlin (I.). Aaron is the author of the Sabbath hymn which begins DJD 511D3N H’ and is still a part of the liturgy of the Hasidim. His ethi- cal will {zewaah) and some collectanea are printed in the work of his grandson, Aaron ben Asher of ; Karlin. Bibliogr.^phy : AmatSo/erirn, note 1294, Lemberg, 18(}3: Bet Aharon, Brodyl 1875. _ ^ P. Wi. j AARON J AROSE AW. See Jaroslaw, Aaron. AARON JEITELES. See Jeiteles, Aaron. AARON OF JERUSALEM (called also I Abu al-Faraj Harun ben Alfarez, the Gram- I marian of Jerusalem): Karaite of the eleventh I century. He was acknowledged by the Rabbin- ! ites as one of the principal representatives of Ka- raitic learning and as a great authority on gram- mar and exegesis. He is quoted by Abraham ibii Ezra in the preface to his “ Moznayim ” as “ the sage of Jerusalem, not known to me by name, who wrote j eight books on grammar, as precious as sapphire. ” I Moses ibn Ezra refers to him as “ the sage of Jeru- I Salem who wrote the ’ Mushtamil, ’ ” and also quotes ' him as “ Sheik Abu al-Faraj of .lerusalem, who is no adherent of our religious community.” Judah ibn I Baliiam likewise mentions “ the grammarian of the j Holy City ”; and Abu al-Walid in his “ Rikmah” re- I lates that Jacob de Leon brought him from Jeru- salem “ the copy of a book by an author who lived there, but whose name he refrains from mention- I ing,” because, as Bacher surmises, he was a Karaite. I Little was known of Aaron until Neubauer dis- I covered, among the manuscript collection of Fir- kovitch in St. Petersburg, important fragments in Arabic of the “Mushtamil” (The Comprehen- i sive), a Hebrew grammar consisting of eight books. I Bacher, while studying these fragments, succeeded in rediscovering the unknown grammarian. S. Poz- nanski published some valuable specimens of Aaron's woi’k; and, following a suggestion of Harkavy, he ] threw new light on the author and some other works of his—namely, the “ Kitab al-Kafi,” a commen- tary on the Pentateuch, often quoted by Karaite writers, and a lexicographical work bearing the title “Sharh Alalfaz,” a part of which is extant in the I British ^luseum. I Bibliography : Furst, Gesch. d. Kardert. 1.99,100; Bacher, in Rer. Ei. Juives, xxx. 232-2.56; Poznanski, ihid., 1896, xxxill. 24-;l9, 197-218; Pinsker, Likkute Kadmoniot, pp. 109 etseq. K. AARON OF JITOMIR or ZHITOMIR : A dis ciple of Baer of Mezhirich and a representative of the sect of the Hasidim: born about 1750; died about 1820. He ivrote cabalistic homilies on the Penta- teuch under the title “ Toledot Aharon ” (The Gen- erations of Aaron), Berditchev, 1817. Bibliography : Walden, Shem ha-Gedolim he-Hadash, p. 19, No. Ill, Warsaw, 1879. A. B. D. AARON, JONAS : First known .Jewish resident of Philadelphia; mentioned in an article entitled “ A Philadelphia Business Directory of 1703,” by Charles H. Browning, published in “The American Histor- ical Register,” April, 1895. There the name of Jona.s Aaron is referred to as being upon the account- books of Judge Trent. Bibliography : A. S. W. Rosenbach, Notes on the First Set- tlement of Jews in Pennsulvarna, 1655-1703. in Publica- tions of the Am. Jew. Hist. Soc., No. 5, p. 191, 1897. A. S, W.-R. AARON BEN JOSEPH OF BEAUGENCY; French Bible commentator and rabbinical scholar, who flourished in the twelfth century at Beaugency, near Orleans. He was the contemporarj' of Rab- benu Tam (about 1110-75), with whom he main- tained a scholarly coiTespondence. Bibliography : Zunz, Z. G. p. 80; Gross, Gallia Judaica, p. 116. L. G. AARON BEN JOSEPH OF BUDA (Ofen); A .Judaeo-Gennan poet of the seventeenth century, who was captured in the city of Ofen, the capital of Hungary, on September 2, 1686, when the imperial troops, under the command of Duke Charles of Lorraine, finally ivrested it from the power of the Turks. He was the author of “Ein Schocn Neu Lied von Ofen” (Bak, Prague, 1686), a Juda'o-German poem describing the fate of the Jews of Buda, and especially laudatory of one Sender ben Joseph Tausk, to whom the poem is dedicated. Bibliography : Steinsohneider, Serapeum, 1848, p. 3.52, No. 110a; Idem, Cat. Bodl. Nos. 36.54, 4358; Kaufmaun, Die Erstlij-mung Ofen's, 1895. q AARON BEN JOSEPH HA-LEVI (abbre viated RAH = Rabbi Aaron Ha-IiCvi): Talmudist and critic; a direct descendant of Zeraiiiaii ha-Levi, and probably, like him, a native of Gerona, Spain; tlourished at the end of the thirteenth centurj'; died before 1303. About the middle of the thirteenth century he studied under Nahmanides, at Gerona, where he also met, as a fcliow pupil, Solomon HEN Adret, who later came to be his opponent. Aaron especially mentions among his teachers his brother Phinehas (who migrated later to Canet near Perpignan, after which jilace he is surnamed), and his nephew Isaac, the son of his brother Benveniste. His life appears to have been spent in Spain. In 12H5 he was rabbi in Saragossa, where he was so highly respected that Nissim hen Reeben, in 13.50, did not dare to annul a decision given by Aaron to a commu- nity in that city, even though he considered it illegal (Isaac ben Sheshet, responsa. No. 390). About 1291 Aaron lived for a short time in Toledo. The asser- tion of some modern historians that, when advanced in age, he emigrated to Provence, is based on a mis- understanding of i\Ieiri (see below), where the cor- rect reading is jni instead of Nini, and miD 'V'DID in- stead of min (see Neubauer’s edition, p. 230). According to Isaac de Lattes, Aaron wrote com- mentaries on most of the treatises in the Talmud, of which but few exist to-day; namely, those on the treatises Bezah and Ketubot, also commentaries on the Halakot of Alfasi, of which the portions on Bera- kot and Ta'anit have been published b}' S. and N. Bamberger (Mentz, 1874) under the title “Pekudat ha-Lewiyim. ” He wrote also several compendiums of laws concerning the precepts of various rituals. The “Precepts Concerning Wine,” which is added to the work “ ‘Abodat ha-Kodesh ” by his opponent, Solo- mon ben Adret (Venice, 1602), is the only one pub- lished ; another part is in manuscript in the Bodleian Library. His pupil Yom-Tob Ashbili (that is, of Seville) has preserved, in his novellie (“Hiddushim”) to the Talmud, many of the explanations of Aaron. The reputation of Aaron as a high Talmudic author- ity did not arise from any of the above works, which were not widely published, but from his “Bedek ha-$