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fagius, paulus
ham and Naphtali b. Abraham, leased a workshop there for
the manufacture of glass articles. They signed the contract of
tenancy in Hebrew characters; this document is preserved in
the community archives in Budapest. They were followed by
other lessees as well as by Jews who leased the local tavern. A
community was organized and a cemetery acquired in Fagaras
in 1827. At the beginning of the community’s existence its
members used mostly the German language, only later going
over to Hungarian. After 1919 many of them started to teach
their children the language of the new country – Romanian.
The synagogue was erected in 1859. There were 286 Jews living
in Fagaras in 1856; 485 in 1891; 514 in 1910; 457 in 1920;
390 in 1930; and 267 in 1941. The Jewish contribution to the
economic development of the town and the region was very
important during the entire existence of the local community.
A Jewish school was founded in 1867; the language of
instruction was German until 1903, Hungarian until the end
of World War I, and subsequently Romanian. It was closed
down in 1938. The community joined the neologist organization
(see *Neology) in 1869 and became Orthodox in 1926.
The rabbi of Fagaras, Adolf Keleman (1861–1917), visited Ereẓ
Israel in 1905 and subsequently published his impressions of
the journey in Hungarian.
For long periods of time the relations between the Jews
and the Romanian and Hungarian population of the region
was more or less normal, with relatively few antisemitic incidents.
During the Romanian Fascist regime (1940–44), Jewish
possessions and communal property were confiscated.
Some of the men were conscripted for forced labor and others
(mostly those accused for Communist activities) were
deported to *Transnistria. The Jews from the surrounding
villages were concentrated in the town. There were 360 Jews
living in Fagaras in 1947. Subsequently many left, first for the
bigger cities in Romania, and after that abroad (mostly to
Israel), and 20 remained by 1970.
Bibliography: Sitzungs-Protokoll fuer die Beschluesse der Fogaraser
israelitischen Kultusgemeinde, 1861–1874; Grundbuch der Sitze
und deren Inhaber in Fogaraser Tempel, in: the Central Archives for
the History of the Jewish People (RM 189); Pinkas Ḥevrah Kaddisha
1827–61 (ibid., RM 190); MHJ, 5 pt. 1 (1959), no. 716, 808, 864, 868, 887;
8 (1965), no. 360; Magyar Zsid Lexikon (1929), 284.
[Yehouda Marton / Paul Schveiger (2nd ed.)]
°FAGIUS, PAULUS (Paul Buechelin; 1504–1549), Hebraist.
Born at Rheinzabern, in the Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany,
he was professor of theology at Strasbourg and later of Hebrew
at Cambridge. He studied Hebrew with Wolfgang Capito and
with Elijah Levita, whom he invited to supervise the Hebrew
press he established in Isny (Bavaria). He translated the following
Hebrew books into Latin: Elijah Levita’s Tishbi (Isny,
1541; Basle, 1557) and Meturgeman (Isny, 1542); the Talmud
tractate Avot (Isny, 1541). He edited a Hebrew version of the
book of Tobit with a Latin translation (Isny, 1542); the Alphabet
of Ben Sira (Isny, 1542), and David Kimhi’s commentary
to Psalms 1–10 (Constance, 1544). He edited several chapters
of Targum Onkelos (Strasbourg, 1546) and wrote an exegetic
treatise on the first four chapters of Genesis. (“Exegesis sive
expositio dictionum hebraicarum literalis et simplex in quatuor
capita Geneseos,” Isny, 1542). He was the author of an elementary
Hebrew grammar (Constance, 1543) and translated
an anonymous booklet by a converted Jew, who endeavored,
with reference to Jewish sources, to prove the truth of Christianity
(Liber Fidei, Isny, 1542; a short extract, under the title
Parvus Tractatulus, appeared in the same year in the Hebrew
Prayers edited by Fagius). Some parts of the same text had
been already published and translated by Sebastian Münster
in 1537. He began the republication of a revised edition of
the concordance Me’ir Nativ. After his migration to England,
where he died, this work was completed by Antonius Reuchlin
(Basle, 1556).
Bibliography: L. Geiger, Das Studium der hebraeischen
Sprache in Deutschland (1870), 66; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 977, no.
5048; 3080, no. 9397; idem, in: REJ, 4 (1882), 78–87; 5 (1882), 57–67;
idem, in: ZHB, 2 (1897), 149–50, no. 178; Perles, Beitraege, index; M.
Stern, Urkundliche Beitraege ueber die Stellung der Paepste zu den Juden
(1893), no. 159; J.-B. Prijs, Die Basler he bräischen Drucke (1964),
82–83, 500; A.M. Habermann, in: Alei Sefer, 2 (1976), 97–104; R. Peter,
in: Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 59 (1979), 385–390;
L.T. Stuckenbruck, in: G.G. Xeravits and J. Zsengeller (eds.), The Book
of Tobit (2005), 194–219.
[Giulio Busi (2nd ed.)]
FAHN, ABRAHAM (1916– ), botanist. Fahn was born in
Vienna but grew up in Halicz and went to school there and in
Stanislawow (Poland). He immigrated to Ereẓ Israel in 1935.
Fahn studied biology at the Hebrew University, where he obtained
his doctorate in 1948. In 1952–53 he did research at the
Jodrell Laboratory, Kew, and in the school of Botany at Cambridge,
England. In 1956 he was a research fellow at Harvard
University and in 1965 he was appointed full professor at the
Hebrew University. Fahn published a number of scientific
books: Plant Anatomy (in Hebrew, 1962; translated into English,
Spanish, Indonesian, and Chinese); Secretory Tissues in
Plants (in English, 1979); and, with coauthors, Wood Anatomy
and the Identification of Trees and Shrubs of Israel and Adjacent
Regions (in English, 1986); Xerophytes (in English, 1992);
and The Cultivated Plants of Israel (in Hebrew, 1998). Fahn was
dean of the Faculty of Science in 1963–66. He is an honorary
member of leading scientific societies, foreign member of the
Linnaean Society of London, and corresponding member of
the Botanical Society of America. He was awarded the Israel
Prize for science in 1963.
[Bracha Rager (2nd ed.)]
FAHN, REUBEN (1878–1939?), Hebrew writer and investigator
of Karaism. Born in eastern Galicia, he became a prosperous
merchant in Halicz and developed an interest in the
town’s Karaites. He settled in Stanislav in 1918 and became
secretary of the National Council of Galician Jewry in the
short-lived West Ukrainian Republic (1918–19). On the out-
676 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6