MESHULLAM BEN ISAAC SALEM BEN JOSEPH – Italian poet; lived successively at Mantua and Venice at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth. Like his father, he was a corrector in the Hebrew printing-offices at the above-named cities,...
MESHULLAM BEN ISRAEL – Talmudic scholar of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; author of "Mar'eh Meḳom ha-Dinim" (Cracow, 1647), an alphabetical index to the Shulḥan 'Aruk. Fürst ("Bibl. Jud." ii. 369) records that he was known also as "Phoebus,"...
MESHULLAM BEN JACOB OF LUNEL – French Talmudist; died at Lunel in 1170. He directed a Talmudic school which produced several famous men, and was an intimate friend of Abraham b. Isaac, ab bet din of Narbonne, who addressed to him several responsa, and spoke...
MESHULLAM BEN JOEL HA-KOHEN – Galician Talmudist; died at Lemberg Sept. 25, 1809. At first rabbi at Zurawno (Galicia), he was called to Koretz to succeed his brother Isaac; he then went to Bolechow, and finally to Lemberg. Meshullam's Talmudic attainments...
MESHULLAM BEN JONAH – Physician and translator of the thirteenth century. It appears that he lived in southern France. He occupied himself with medicine merely as a study, and seems never to have practised. At the desire of a friend named Ḥafeẓ or...
MESHULLAM BEN KALONYMUS BEN TODROS – French scholar of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; nasi of Narbonne. Meshullam sided with Judah al-Fakhkhar in his attacks on the works of Maimonides and the philosophers. Nevertheless, he blamed Al-Fakhkhar for the...
MESHULLAM BEN MACHIR (DON BONET CRESCAS DE LUNEL) – French scholar; settled at Perpignan, where he died in 1306. Abba Mari, who was a relative of Meshullam, lamented the latter's death in a letter of condolence which he sent to the community of Perpignan ("Minḥat Ḳena'ot," MS. No...
MESHULLAM BEN NATHAN OF MELUN – French tosafist; born at Narbonne about 1120. He was a member of the rabbinical college of Narbonne and, with Abraham ben Isaac, ab bet din, and other rabbis, was one of the signatories of a responsum issued there about 1150...
MESHULLAM PHOEBUS BEN ISRAEL SAMUEL – Chief rabbi of Cracow; born about 1547; died at Cracow Oct. 17, 1617. Meshullam is first known as the head of a flourishing yeshibah at Brest-Litovsk, one of his pupils being Joel Sirḳes. The year of his arrival at Cracow is not...
MESHULLAM BEN SOLOMON – Poet; lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Although Jedaiah Bedersi, in his "Iggeret Hitnaẓẓelut," classes Meshullam among the Provençal poets, Meshullam's native country seems to have been Spain. According to Gross...
MESHULLAM TYSMENITZ – See Tysmenitz, Meshullam.
MESHUMMAD – See Apostasy.
MESHWI AL-'UKBARI – Founder of the Jewish sect Al-'Ukbariyyah (Okbarites), which derived its name from the city of 'Ukbara, near Bagdad, said to have been the place of residence of Meshwi. According to Ḳirḳisani, Meshwi lived after Ishmael...
MESOPOTAMIA – See Aram; Assyria; Babylonia.
MESQUITA – Castilian family, members of which, during the period of the Inquisition, found their way to Holland, England, and America.David Bueno de Mesquita was one of the wealthy merchants of Amsterdam about the middle of the seventeenth...
MESQUITA, MOSES GOMEZ DE – Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of England; born in 1688; died May 8, 1751. Mesquita was appointed haham in 1744, in succession to Isaac Nieto, who had resigned, and held the office until his death. He solemnized the...
MESSENGER – See Agency, Law of.
MESSER, LEON (JUDAH BEN JEHIEL ROFE) – Italian rabbi, physician, and philosopher; flourished in Mantua in the latter half of the fifteenth century. He is said to have been born in Naples. The name "Leon" is the usual equivalent of "Judah" and "Messer" (= "Maestro"),...
MESSIAH – The Name. The name or title of the ideal king of the Messianic age; used also without the article as a proper name—"Mashiaḥ" (in the Babylonian Talmud and in the midrash literature), like Χριστός in the Gospels. The Grecized...
MESSIAH, FALSE – See Pseudo-Messiah.
MESSIANIC PROPHECY – See Prophecy.
MESSIANIC YEAR – See Calendar.
MESSINA – Italian city, "at the point of Sicily, on the strait called Lunir, which divides Calabria from Sicily." ("Itinerary" of Benjamin of Tudela). Its Jewish community may have been founded even before the destruction of the Second...
MESSING – Prussian family, members of which in the nineteenth century settled in the United States of America.Joseph Messing: Talmudist, exegete, and rabbi; born at Argenau, Prussia, April 30, 1812;died in London, England, March 20, 1880....
METALS – Although Deut. viii. 9 describes the Promised Land as one rich in ore, Palestine itself was really almost without metals, which had to be imported from neighboring countries. The passage in question is therefore taken by certain...