| PESARO – Rivalry with Ancona. Town in the Marches, Italy, formerly belonging to the duchy of Urbino. It has numbered some Jews among its inhabitants since the fifteenth century. One of the first Hebrew printers, Abraham b. Ḥayyim dei... |
| PESARO, AARON – Author of the work "Toledot Aharon," in which beside every Biblical verse is noted the place where the verse is explained in the Talmud and Midrash. It is not known where or when the author lived; but it is probable that he... |
| PESEL – Usually carved in wood, or hewn in stone, and called "massekah"; the ephod belonged to it as covering, as in the case of Gideon ("pesel of Gideon") and Micah (Judges xviii. 18 [xvii. 4, 5, Hebr.]). The worship of it was... |
| PESHAṬ – Term denoting simple Scriptural exegesis, and derived from the verb "pashaṭ." "Pashaṭ" in late Biblical Hebrew, as well as in the Mishnah, means "to spread," "to stretch out," and is figuratively used, therefore, in the sense of... |
| PESHIṬTA – The oldest Syriac translation of both the Old and New Testaments. The term "Peshiṭta" means "the simple one" in distinction from Origen's Hexapla. This term was first used by Moses bar Kepha (died 913), then by Gregory bar... |
| PESIḲTA (DE-RAB KAHANA; RABBATI; ZUṬARTI) – See Midrash Haggadah. |