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were deported to Minsk in 1942. Beda himself died in *Auschwitz
that same year.
Bibliography: A. Baar (ed.), 50 Jahre Hakoah (1959), 27,
227–8, 258–60; W. Barrel et al., Buchenwald (Ger. 1960), index; S.
Czech, Schoen ist die Welt (1957), 34, 258–86, 292; MGG; G. Schwarberg,
Dein ist mein ganzes Herz. Die Geschichte von Fritz Löhner-Beda
(2000); B. Denscher and H.Peschina, Kein Land des Laechelns. Fritz
Löhner-Beda 1883–1942 (2002).
[Lisa Silverman (2nd ed.)]
BEDACHT, MAX (1883–1972), U.S. Communist leader. Bedacht
was born in Munich, Germany. After an impoverished
childhood and a career as a journeyman barber and trade
union leader in Germany and Switzerland, he immigrated to
New York City in 1908, where he supported himself as a barber
and German-language newspaper editor. He moved to Detroit
and then to San Francisco (1919), where he worked as an editor
for the German press. In the same year he was made a member
of the national executive committee of the newly formed
Communist Labor Party, renamed the American Communist
Party in 1921. In this capacity Bedacht was sent as a delegate
to the Comintern Congress in Moscow (1921), from which he
returned an apostle of the militant new line. While primarily
a labor agitator, Bedacht rose to serve on the central executive
committee’s secretariat (1927–29), and in 1933 was named general
secretary of the International Workers Order. He built its
Jewish fraternal section into the party’s largest auxiliary, while
editing its publication The New Order. In 1946, following the
post-World War II changes in Communist leadership, Bedacht
was expelled from the party for factionalism, and retired to
become a poultry farmer in New Jersey.
In 1949 he appeared before a hearing of the House Un-
American Activities Committee to deny charges made against
him by the former Russian espionage agent Whittaker Chambers
that for many years he had served as a permanent link
between Soviet military intelligence and the central committee
of the American Communist Party. In his 1952 autobiography
Witness, Chambers wrote: “About both brief, tidy men
[Heinrich Himmler and Max Bedacht] there was a disturbing
quality of secret power mantling insignificance – what might
be called the ominousness of nonentity, which is peculiar to
the terrible little figures of our time.”
Bibliography: D. Bell in: D. Egbert (ed.), Socialism and
American Life, 1 (1952), index; T. Draper, Roots of American Communism
(1957), index; Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952), index.
[Edward L. Greenstein / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BEDARIDA, GUIDO (1900–1962), Italian author and historian.
Born in Ancona of a family of south French origin, Bedarida
ultimately settled in Leghorn. The Jewish environment
had a deep influence on him, inspiring his poetical and literary
work and his eagerness to proclaim his Jewish and Zionist
identity. Most of Bedarida’s poems deal with Jewish subjects.
His first collection of verse, Io Ebreo (1927), appeared under
bédarrides
the pen name of Eliezer ben David, which he thereafter used
frequently. Bedarida wrote plays such as La casa vuota (1928)
and Io t’ho chiamato (1930), and three in the Jewish dialect of
Leghorn: Lucilla fa da sé (1924), Vigilia di sabato (1934), and
Il siclo d’argento (1935). In the verse dialogues Alla “banca di
Memo” and Il lascito del sor Barocas (1950) and in a collection
of sonnets, Ebrei di Livorno (1956), he gave a lively picture of
the life of the Jews of Leghorn and the local Jewish dialect.
His Ebrei d’Italia (1950) described the Jewish contribution to
Italian culture.
Bibliography: E. Toaff, in: Scritti… in memoria di G. Bedarida
(1966), 5–13 (complete bibliography on p. 15).
[Giorgio Romano]
BÉDARRIDE, ISRAÉL (1798–1869), French jurist and historian.
In 1823 Bédarride won a prize from the Institut de
France for his essay on the Jews in the Middle Ages, which he
later enlarged and published as Les juifs en France, en Italie
et en Espagne (1859). The following year Bédarride became a
lawyer in Montpellier and was reputed to be one of the best
jurists of southern France. He wrote many articles on legal
subjects, but Jewish history remained his main interest. In
1867 he published his Etude sur le “Guide des égarés” de Maimonide,
and in 1869 his Etude sur le Talmud. Bédarride was
also interested in contemporary Jewish life and wrote against
proselytism and in favor of religious liberty, Du proselytisme
et de la liberté religieuse, ou le judaisme au milieu des cultes
chrétiens dans I’état actuel de la civilisation (published posthumously).
He was the author of Harcanot et Barcanot, a comedy
on life in Carpentras, written in the local Jewish dialect
(1896, 2nd edition 1925).
Bibliography: M.E. Lisbonne, Etude nécrologique sur Israél
Bédarride (Montpellier, 1870); Felix, in: AI, 30 (1869), 717–23; Z. Szajkowski,
The Language of the Jews in the Four Communities of Comtat
Venaissin (New York, 1948), 32–36 (Yid. with Eng. summary).
BÉDARRIDES, village in the department of Vaucluse, near
Avignon, S. France. The small Jewish community established
in Bédarrides in the Middle Ages was expelled by the vice
legate of Avignon in 1694. One of the prominent Jewish families
of southern France originated in Bédarrides. Its members
include: GAD BEN JUDAH OF BéDARRIDES, who composed
a hymn for a local Purim established at *Cavaillon to commemorate
escape from rioters in 1713; JASSUDA BéDARRIDE
(1804–1882), jurist, who became mayor of Aix-en-Provence
after the 1848 revolution; ISRAéL (ISAIAH) *BéDARRIDE; and
GUSTAVE EMANUEL BéDARRIDES (1817–1899), magistrate, the
first French Jew to be appointed public prosecutor (procureur
général) at Bastia, in Corsica (1862), and vice president of the
Central Consistory from 1872. A branch of the family which
established itself in Italy assumed the name-form *Bedarida.
Bibliography: Bauer, in: REJ, 29 (1894), 254–65; Gross, Gal
Jud, 105; Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 5 (1951), 1256f.
[Cecil Roth]
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