JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ange. While still a youth he became cantor of the Paderborn
congregation and at the age of 26 was appointed chief cantor of
the Heidereutergasse Synagogue in Berlin, a position he held
until his death. Beer was known for his extensive repertory of
liturgical melodies, including many of his own composition.
Tradition credits him with 1,210 items. He made a habit of varying
his tunes for regular prayers in order to discourage the congregation
from joining in his singing, a practice he profoundly
disapproved. Beer’s collection of 447 festival prayer melodies
was passed down to his successor, Asher Leon (1776–1863), and
thereafter to Cantor Moritz Deutsch of Breslau (1818–92), H.
Schlesinger, and Cantor E. Birnbaum (1855–1920). It is now in
the library of the *Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.
Bibliography: Idelsohn, Melodien, 6 (1932), 1–194 (for
Beer’s preface in Hebrew, see after title page); Sendrey, Music, nos.
6042–43; Friedmann, Lebensbilder, 2 (1921), 27–29; J. Meisl et al.
(eds.), Pinkas Kehillat Berlin, 1723–1854 (1962), 229, 230, 232, 280;
Idelsohn, Music, index.
[Joshua Leib Ne’eman]
BEER, BERNHARD (1801–1861), German scholar, community
leader, and bibliophile. For nearly 30 years Beer served
as head of the Dresden Jewish community and its schools. He
founded various charitable organizations, and in 1829 joined
in establishing a Mendelssohn Society for the furtherance of
scholarship, art, and trades among Jewish youth. Through his
writings and personal active efforts, Beer was able to wage an
eventually successful struggle for the civic equality of the Jews
in Saxony. Although he observed traditional practice and was
emotionally attached to Jewish customs, Beer rejected Orthodoxy
intellectually and aesthetically in favor of moderate reforms,
especially in liturgy. He was the first Jew to give a German
sermon in a Dresden synagogue. Beer’s religious views
were similar to those of his close friend, Zacharias *Frankel.
Nevertheless the reformers *Geiger and *Holdheim also accorded
him respect and admiration, and Beer was regarded
as a mediating influence between the proponents of tradition
and those of reform. Beer wrote numerous scholarly articles
and reviews which appeared in Frankel’s Zeitschrift and Monatsschrift
as well as in Orient, Kerem Ḥemed, and other journals.
His books include Das Buch der Jubilaeen und sein Verhaeltniss
zu den Midraschim (1856), Juedische Literaturbriefe
(1857), and Leben Abrahams nach Auffassung der juedischen
Sage (1859). He also translated into German, with additions,
Solomon Munk’s La Philosophie chez les Juifs (Leipzig, 1852).
The extensive and valuable library which Beer acquired during
his lifetime was divided after his death between the Breslau
Seminary and the University of Leipzig, where Beer received
his doctorate in 1834.
Bibliography: Frankel, in: MGWJ, 11 (1862); G. Wolf, Ohel
Issakhar, Catalogue of B. Beer’s Library in Dresden (Ger. and Heb.,
1863). Add. Bibliography: R. Heuer (ed.), Lexikon deutsch-juedischer
Autoren, 1 (1992), 435–40; A. Braemer, Rabbiner Zacharias
Frankel (2000), index.
[Michael A. Meyer]
be’er, haim
BEER, GEORGE LOUIS (1872–1920), U.S. historian and
publicist. Born in Staten Island, N.Y., during his twenties he
was successful in the tobacco business, from which he retired
in 1903 to devote himself to research on the theme which commanded
all his work as an historian: the economic features
of 17th- and 18th-century British colonial policy. His writings
include: Commercial Policy of England toward the American
Colonies (1893); British Colonial Policy, 1754–65 (1907); The
Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578–1660 (1908); and
The Old Colonial System, 1660–1754 (2 vols., 1912). Beer’s basic
theses were that English colonization had aimed at setting up a
self-sufficient commercial empire of interdependent and complementary
areas; that British commercial policy toward the
American colonies had promoted their growth; and that the
removal of the French from Canada encouraged the American
colonies to assert themselves and seek independence. During
World War I, Beer supported the British cause. He expressed
the hope, particularly in The English Speaking Peoples (1917),
that Great Britain and the U.S. would ultimately rejoin in a
political union, to ensure the progress of the postwar world.
He served as chief of the colonial division of the American
delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, and helped draft
the treaty provisions dealing with the former German colonies.
He urged the establishment of “mandates” to promote
the welfare of the natives. His African Questions at the Paris
Peace Conference was published in 1923. A participant in many
communal and charitable activities, Beer was a director of the
Jewish Protectory and Aid Society.
Bibliography: George Louis Beer… (1924); DAB, s.v.; Scott,
in: Marcus W. Jernegan Essays… (1937), 313–22; Cockroft, in: H. Ausubel
et al. (eds.), Some Modern Historians of Britain (1951), 269–85.
[Abraham S. Eisenstadt]
BE’ER, HAIM (1945– ), Israeli writer. Born in Jerusalem,
Be’er grew up in an Orthodox family, among deeply religious
Jews whose conversations were studded with quotations from
the Bible, the Talmud, and the later rabbinic literature. Following
his army service in the military chaplaincy, he joined the
Am Oved Publishing House in Tel Aviv, where he advanced
from proofreader to member of the editorial board. Be’er’s
prose depicts the Orthodox milieu, a wide and colorful range
of types, some eccentric or comic, others pitiable. His first
novel, Noẓot (Feathers; Eng. trans. 2004) describes the experiences
and observations of a boy growing up in Jerusalem
and joining a military burial squad during the Yom Kippur
War (1973). A sense of the grotesque, which underlines the
portraits of a bizarre visionary leader, Esperantists, and vegetarians,
also marks Be’er’s second novel, Et ha-Zamir (“The
Time of Trimming,” 1987). It is the story of Naḥum Gevirẓ,
serving in a rabbinical unit between 1965 and 1967, a period of
messianic dreams and hopes of “liberating the Holy City from
captivity.” This merciless account, marked by parody and biting
criticism, was described by critics as “the Israeli Catch 22.”
Be’er’s personal experiences play an even more significant role
in his third novel, Ḥavalim (1998; The Pure Element of Time,
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 251