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ardejov
where he continued his education at Dropsie College, receiving
his doctorate in 1942.
Returning to Israel in 1946, he engaged in teaching until
ill health forced him to relinquish it in 1951. Thereafter he devoted
himself to research in the geography of Ereẓ Israel and
published articles on topical subjects and literary criticism.
His first major work on the geography of Ereẓ Israel, Ha-
Negev, was published in 1935. A physical geographical study
of the area from Beersheba to the Suez Canal and the Red
Sea, which according to Bar-Daroma was mistakenly called
Sinai, this book won him the Bialik Prize from the City of Tel
Aviv in 1936. In the same year his book Jerusalem, on the topography
of the Old City, was published. His most important
work, Ve-Zeh Gevul ha-Areẓ (1958), was awarded the Rabbi
Ouziel Prize of the City of Jerusalem in 1959 and the Ramat
Gan literary prize.
BARDEJOV (Hg. Bartfa; Ger. Bartfeldt), town in Slovakia,
on the eastern Polish border. The first Jews probably appeared
in Bardejov in the 13th century, after the Tartar invasion, when
the Hungarian king Bela IV invited foreigners to settle in the
devastated country. The Jews engaged in trade and established
inns along the Tokay (Hungary)–Brody (Poland) highway.
Jews again appeared in the town in the 18th century, and with
them Ḥasidism and the *Halberstam (Sanz) dynasty. Several
Halberstams served as local rabbis. In 1808 the Hevra Kaddisha
(burial society) was founded and in 1830 the Great Synagogue
was built. In all, there were five synagogues in Bardejov.
Jews continued to engage in the export of wine to Poland
as a principal occupation and Jewish enterprise helped develop
Bardejov as a fashionable health resort in the early 19th
century. Two printing shops published Hebrew books. Jews
from Bardejov participated in the First Zionist Congress on
1897 and the *Mizrachi Zionist religious movement became a
strong force in the town.
The Jewish population numbered approximately 300
in Bardejov and its surroundings in 1848, 181 in the town
itself in 1851, 480 in 1862, 1,710 in 1900 (of whom, in 1901,
220 owned businesses, 24 kept taverns, and 89 worked as
artisans), and 2,264 in 1930. Most of the local Jews were deported
by the Germans to the Lublin area of Poland on May
15–17, 1942.
After the war Bardejov became a rehabilitation center for
Jewish survivors from the concentration camps and a transit
center for “illegal” immigration to Palestine. (See *Beriḥah).
In 1947, 384 Jews lived in the town, including 79 children. Antisemitism
was still rife and Jews were attacked in June 1947
without being protected by the police. In 1965 only one Jewish
family remained. Ritual objects from Bardejov are preserved
in the Divrei Ḥayyim synagogue in Jerusalem, named
in honor of R. Ḥayyim *Halberstam, the founder of the Sanz
ḥasidic dynasty.
The New York filmmaker Jack Gurfein, a native of Bardejov,
produced a film on the Holocaust in his town called The
Journey Back. In 2003 a volunteer group of architects from
Israel restored a part of the former Jewish quarter of Bardejov,
including the Great Synagogue.
Bibliography: Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929), 92; M. Atlas,
in: Zeitschrift fuer Geschichte der Juden (1966), 151–70; L. Rotkirchen,
Ḥurban Yahadut Slovakyah (1961); P. Meyer et al., Jews in the Soviet
Satellites (1953), 637; M. Lànyi and H. Propper. A szlovenszkói zsidó
hitközségek története (1933), 142. Add. Bibliography: E. Bárkány
and L. Dojč, Židovské náboženské obce na Slovensku (1991), 353–57;
M. Atlas, “Die Juedische Geschichte der Stadt Bartfeld (Barfa) und
des Bades Bardejov in der Tschechoslowakei,” in: Zeitschrift fuer die
Geschichte der Juden, 3 (1966), 151–71.
[Yeshayahu Jellinek (2nd ed.)]
BARDIN, SHLOMO (1898–1976), educator. Bardin was born
Shlomo Bardinstein in Zhitomir, Ukraine, and emigrated to
Palestine in 1918. After working as an administrative assistant
at the Hebrew Secondary School in Haifa, he left to study
at the University of Berlin in 1923 and University College in
London in 1925. Returning to Haifa in 1926, Bardin taught at
the Hebrew Boarding School before setting off for New York
City and earning his M.A. at Columbia University’s Teachers
College in 1930 and his Ph.D. in 1932. In 1933, he returned
to Haifa to establish the Haifa Technical Institute, to which
he added the Haifa Nautical School in 1938. In 1939, he went
back to the United States, where he remained when World
War II broke out. He was naturalized as an American citizen
in 1943. He was appointed concurrent director of the Youth
Department of Hadassah and the newly established American
Zionist Youth Commission (1939), under whose auspices
he founded a summer leadership-training program for young
adults in 1941. Located in Amherst, New Hampshire, the summer
institute was an innovative leadership program styled
on the kibbutz model; in addition to daily classes and study
sessions, he instituted gardening and physical labor. Shabbat
was the centerpiece of the week, celebrated in song, drama,
pageantry, and egalitarian services. In 1943, Bardin moved the
program to the Poconos, naming it the Brandeis Camp Institute
in honor of the recently deceased Supreme Court justice,
whose philosophy of American patriotism combined with the
commitment to Judaism and Zionism Bardin espoused. Bardin
recast his own definition of Zionism from physical relocation
to a Jewish homeland to a return to “the spiritual center
of one’s mind.” Bardin expanded his summer operations to
comprise a western camp in the Simi Valley near Los Angeles
(1947) and a southern camp in North Carolina (1949). He
soon took the camps out of the Zionist fold and established a
separate camp organization that attracted young people from
the entire spectrum of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox
Judaism and gave them, as Bardin promised, “an experience
that will last a lifetime.” In 1951, he moved to Los Angeles and
began transforming the west coast camp into an experiential
educational center that comprised a summer camp program
for youth and weekend institutes for young adults, couples,
and families during the rest of the year. Enriched by the contribution
of Hollywood writers and producers, the program-
148 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3