SONNENFELS – Austrian family of scholars and writers, descendants of Wurzbach Lipmann, members of which became prominent during the eighteenth century.Perlin Lipmann Sonnenfels: Austrian scholar; son of Wurzbach Lipmann, chief rabbi of...
SONNENTHAL, ADOLF RITTER VON – Austrian actor; born at Budapest Dec. 21, 1834. He was the son of humble parents, and spent his boyhood as a tailor's apprentice, working at his trade until his sixteenth year, when he went to Vienna to better his condition. On...
SONNESCHEIN, SOLOMON H. – American rabbi; born at Szent Marton Turocz, Hungary, June 24, 1839. He received his education at Boskowitz, Moravia, where he obtained his rabbinical diploma in 1863, and later studied at Hamburg and at the University of Jena...
SONNINO, SIDNEY, BARON – Italian politician; born at Alexandria, Egypt, in 1849. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Leghorn, and his mother an English Protestant. He grew up in Florence among a circle of kindred spirits including such men as the...
SORANI, UGO – Italian jurist and deputy; born at Pitigliano May 4, 1850. He studied law in his native town and in Mondavi, Leghorn, and Pisa, graduating from the university of the last-named city in 1872. He then established himself as a...
SOSA (SOSSA, SOUSA), DE – Envoy of King John III. of Portugal to the court of Pope Paul III. (1534-50). While he was at Rome the Maranos, seeking relief from the severity of the Inquisition, urged the pope to send a papal nuncio to Portugal in their...
SOSA, GOMEZ DE – See Gomez de Sosa.
SOSA, MARTIN ALFONSO DE – Portuguese envoy at and governor of Goa, in the middle of the sixteenth century. In Cranganore, sixteen miles from Cochin, which at that time had a large Jewish community, he discovered several bronze tablets with ancient...
SOSA, SIMON DE – One of the wealthiest Maranos in Portugal in the middle of the seventeenth century. He was one of the conspirators, led by the Archbishop of Braga, who intended to burn the royal palaces, murder King John IV., and abduct the...
SOSIUS, CAIUS – Roman general. Although Herod had been made king of Judea by the Romans, he was forced to wrest the country from the Hasmonean Antigonus; and as the aid which he had received from Rome was insufficient, he went to Samosata to...
SOSSNITZ, JOSEPH JUDAH LÖB – Russian-American Talmudic scholar, mathematician, and scientific author; born at Birzhi, government of Kovno, Sept. 17, 1837. When he was only ten years old he prepared a calendar for the year 5608 (=1847-48). At the age of...
SOṬAH – Treatise in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, devoted in the main to an exact definition of the rules of procedure in the case of a wife either actually or supposedly unfaithful (Num. v. 11-31). In...
SOUL – Biblical and Apocryphal Views. The Mosaic account of the creation of man speaks of a spirit or breath with which he was endowed by his Creator (Gen. ii. 7); but this spirit was conceived of as inseparably connected, if not...
SOULS, TRANSMIGRATION OF – See Transmigration of Souls.
SOUSA – See Sosa.
SOUTH AFRICA – Jewish concern with South Africa began, indirectly, some time before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, by the participation of certain astronomers and cartographers in the Portuguese discovery of the sea-route to lndia....
SOUTH CAROLINA – One of the thirteen original states of the United States. Most of the events relating to Jews occurring in this state have been connected with the town of Charleston, and will be found treated under that caption. It is only...
SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA – Certain portions of the American continent which were first colonized by the Spaniards and Portuguese, and which still remain Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking. As regards the period during which these countries were under...
SPAETH, JOHANN PETER (MOSES GERMANUS) – Leaves Catholicism for Lutheranism. Convert to Judaism; born at Venice in the first half of the seventeenth century; died at Amsterdam April 27, 1701. On account of rumors of impending war, his father, who was a poor shoemaker,...
SPAIN – Early Settlement. Jews lived in Spain in very early times, although the legend that Solomon's treasurer Adoniram died there, as well as the story that the Jews of Toledo, in a letter addressed to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem,...
SPALATO (SPALATRO) – Commercial port of Dalmatia, and a city of note since the days of the Roman empire. Its earliest Hebrew inhabitants were immigrants from the Turkish provinces of Servia and Rumania; but many years passed before a Jewish...
SPANIER, MEYER – German educationist and writer; born at Wunstorf, Hanover, Nov. 1, 1864; studied philosophy and Germanic philology at Heidelberg (Ph. D. 1894). For some years he acted as teacher in various schools in Altona and Hamburg, and in...
SPANISH TOWN – See Jamaica.
SPARROW – Rendering given in the English versions (Ps. lxxxiv. 4 [A. V. 3], cii. 8 [A. V. 7]) for the word "ẓippor," which denotes birds in general, but is used especially of small passerine birds. Four species of sparrow are very...
SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE – Proceeding by which a court compels an obligor to carry out his contract rather than make him pay damages in money for the breach of it. In English-American law the phrase is used almost exclusively in reference to a contract to...