BARBERS – See Beard.
BARBY, MEÏR B. SAUL – Talmudist and rabbi; born about 1725 at Barby, a small city near Halberstadt, Prussia; died July 28, 1789, at Presburg. His father, a tradesman, was so poor that when he took Meïr, a weak, thirteen-year-old boy, to the yeshibah...
BARCELONA – Capital of Catalonia, Spain; much praised by Jewish travelers and poets for its beauty and its picturesque situation; was inhabited by Jews as early as the ninth century. According to tradition, the Jews dwelling there assisted...
BARCELONI, ISAAC BEN REUBEN – See Isaac b. Reuben of Barcelona.
BARCHES – Judίo-German for an oblong loaf of twisted bread, called in some countries also "Taatscher" or "Datscher." Both names are by popular etymology wittily applied to the words "birkat" (blessing) and "ta'ashir" (maketh rich) in the...
BARDA – Formerly an important city (often mentioned by the Arabic geographers of the ninth and tenth centuries in connection with the invasions of the Russians in 880, 910, 914, and 943), now a Tatar village on the Terter river, in the...
BARDACH, ELIJAH – Merchant and Hebrew scholar; born at Lemberg 1794; died at Vienna April 11, 1864. He devoted his leisure time to the study of Hebrew literature, and is the author of "'Aḳedat Yiẓḥaḳ" (The Sacrifice of Isaac), Vienna, 1833—a...
BARDACH, ISRAEL ISAAC BEN ḤAYYIM MOSES – Grammarian; lived in Lithuania at the end of the eighteenth century. He was the author of "Ṭa'ame Torah" (The Accents of the Law), which forms the second part of a treatise of his on grammar. This work was published at Wilna in...
BARDACH, JULIUS – Russian writer and teacher; born at Turijsk, province of Volhynia, 1828; died in Odessa in 1897 (?). He is said to have descended from Samuel b. David, author of the "ṬaZ" (commentary on the Shulḥan 'Aruk; the initials of Ṭure...
BAREFOOT – Biblical Data: In II Sam. xv. 30 it is mentioned that David, on his flight before Absalom, went Barefoot to show his grief. Micah i. 8, "to be barefooted" (according to LXX.; "stripped," A. V.) is, likewise, a sign of mourning....
BAREHEADEDNESS – Jewish custom has for ages required women to cover the hair as an evidence of their modesty before men, and required men to cover the head in order to show their humility and reverence before God.Bareheadedness of Women. In...
BARFAT – Name used by Jews in Provence and northern Spain; e.g., = "Barfat certifies as witness," found in an agreement between Pedro II. of Aragon and the Knights of St. Jean (MS. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale); "Niçak Barfat"...
BARGAINS AND SALES – See Sale.
BARGAS, ABRAHAM DE – Translator into Ladino of the prayers composed by Malachi ben Jacob on the occasion of the earthquake at Leghorn, in January, 1742, under the title "Traduccion de la Oracion del Ajuno de los Temblores de Tierra que en Ladino...
BARGÈS, JEAN JOSEPH LEANDRE – Honorary canon of Notre Dame of Paris, abbé and Orientalist; born in 1810 at Auriol (Bouches-du-Rhône); died in 1896 near Marseilles. From 1835 he was a member of the Asiatic Society of Paris. After delivering lectures on Arabic...
BARI – Seaport town in Apulia, Italy, on the Adriatic; capital of the district of the same name. As the center of an extended trade with Triest, Corfu, Messina, and the Orient, Bari was at all times a place of importance; information,...
BARIS – See Antonia.
BARIT, JACOB – Russian Talmudist and communal worker; born at Simno, government of Suwalki, Sept. 12, 1797; died at Wilna March 6, 1883. He lost his parents early in life, and at the age of fourteen came to the city of Kovno, where he studied...
BARKANY, MARIE – Austrian actress; born at Kaschau, Hungary, March 2, 1862. She was one of the six daughters of a merchant at Kaschau, and was sent to Vienna to learn bookkeeping. Instead, she occupied her time studying for the stage, taking...
BARḲI – Writer; flourished in the seventeenth century at Salonica. He was, according to Azulai, a pupil of Ḥayyim Shabbethai (died 1647), otherwise called . Of his literary activity little is known. There is a decision of his published...
BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT – A romantic tale under this title, giving extracts from the life of Buddha and some of his parables in Christian form, which has led to the adoption of the two titular heroes, as unofficial saints, into the calendar of the...
BARLEY – A cereal often mentioned in the Old Testament as one of the common food-products of Palestine. It was and still is used as second only to wheat as an ingredient for bread, and as such was indicative of poverty, as seen in...
BARLOW, THOMAS – Bishop of Lincoln; born in Westmoreland in 1607; died Oct. 8, 1691. He was educated at Appleby, and removed thence to Queen's College, Oxford. In 1654 he was appointed keeper of the Bodleian Library. Afterward he was made...
BARNABAS, JOSES – The "Apostle." One of the Apostles, of the tribe of Levi and of the country of Cyprus. In Acts iv. 36 his name is given as "Bar Naḥamah" (son of consolation), of which "Barnabas" is the Grecized form. Some explain the name as...
BARNACLE-GOOSE – Early Belief in the Myth. A curious notion prevailed in the Middle Ages, that this bird (Branta leucopsis) was generated from the barnacle, a shell-fish growing on a flexible stem, and adhering to loose timber, bottoms of ships,...