JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

affairs. After failing to receive a realistic place in the Labor list
for the Sixteenth Knesset, Beilin, together with Yael *Dayan,
joined the Meretz list, but when Meretz received only six seats,
he failed to enter the Knesset. With Palestinian leader Yasser
Abed Rabbo, Beilin started to work on a new peace document
that came to be known as the Geneva Initiative, signed in Geneva
under the auspices of Swtizerland on December 1, 2003.
On March 16, 2004, Beilin won the election for leadership of
Meretz (which changed its name to “Yaḥad and the Democratic
Choice”) against MK Ran Cohen.
The following of his books have appeared in English:
Israel: A Concise Political History (1993); Touching Peace (1999);
Dispatches from Palestine: The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Agreement
(1999); His Brother’s Keeper: Israel and Diaspora Jewry
in the Twenty-First Century (2000); Manual for a Wounded
Dove (2003); The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent
Agreement, 1996–2004 (2004).
Bibliography: S. Ben-Porat, Siḥot im Yossi Beilin (“Talks
with Yossi Beilin,” 1997).
[Susan Hattis Rolef (2nd ed.)]
BEILINSON (Belinson), MOSES ELIEZER (1835–1908),
Hebrew and Yiddish writer and publisher. He was born in
Dubrovna (Russia). In 1860 he published a brochure Ẓevi la-
Ẓaddik containing an apologia for Judaism and an attack upon
Christianity and Karaism. He translated Ludwig Philippson’s
novel Die Vertreibung der Juden aus Spanien und Portugal into
Hebrew as Galut Sefarad in 1860. In the 1860s he established a
Hebrew printing press in Odessa, and published Alei Hadas, a
literary and scholarly periodical (1865), in which he printed his
correspondence with Philippson on the situation of the Jews
in Russia. Only four issues appeared. Perez *Smolenskin published
his first pamphlets at Beilinson’s press (1862–67); Beilinson
wanted to “correct” Smolenskin’s style, but most of his
corrections were rejected. Kol Mevasser (1871), the first Yiddish
weekly published in Russia, was also printed at Beilinson’s press
and Beilinson succeeded Moshe Leib *Lilienblum as its editor,
using the pseudonym “M.E.B.N.” He composed three genealogical
histories (including one on his own family): Megillat
Yuḥasin (1891), Yalkut Mishpaḥot (1892), and Millu’im le-Koveẓ
Yalkut Mishpaḥot (1893). He published Toledot ha-Rav Yosef
Shelomo Rofe Delmedigo mi-Kandia (1864), a biography based
on Abraham Geiger’s Melo Ḥofnayim (German section), and
Shelomei Emunei Yisrael, three brochures dealing with literary
and scientific topics (1898–1901). He also edited Koveẓ Yagdil
Torah (1879–85) and Koveẓ Mekhilta de-Rabbanan (1885), dealing
with halakhic matters. Beilinson adapted Longfellow’s Judas
Maccabaeus into a Yiddish Ḥanukkah play (1882), and also
adapted Philippson’s above-mentioned novel (1888). He additionally
published Nutslikher Fremdvorterbukh (Part 1, 1887),
a dictionary of foreign phrases used in Yiddish.
Bibliography: Zeitlin, Bibliotheca, 18–19; Rejzen, Leksikon
1 (1928), 328–30; Wachstein et al., Hebraische Publizistik in Wien, 1
(1930), 11, 293.
[Gedalyah Elkoshi]
beilis, menahem mendel
BEILINSON, MOSHE (1889–1936), Hebrew writer, journalist,
and one of the chief spokesmen of the labor movement in
Ereẓ Israel. Beilinson, who was born in Veprika, Russia, qualified
as a doctor in 1913. A supporter of the Russian socialist
movement, he was won over to Zionist socialism by Z. Shazar
and B. Katznelson. After World War I he settled in Italy, where
he became active in the Zionist movement. He also published
a series of translations into Italian of books of Jewish interest,
including: Buber’s Reden ueber das Judentum (1923); R. Travers
Herford’s Pharisees (1925); and (with Dante *Lattes) Joseph
Klausner’s Kiẓẓur Toledot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ha-Ḥaḍashah
(1926). In 1924 he settled in Petaḥ Tikvah and soon afterward
joined the editorial board of the newly founded *Davar. Here
Beilinson published articles and notes, discussing problems of
the Palestinian labor movement. He first wrote in Russian but
changed to Hebrew in 1926. His style was simple and fluent.
Beilinson wrote: Bi-Ymei Massah, on the Jewish-Arab question
(1930); Bi-Ymei Teḥiyyat Italyah (1930); Be-Mashber ha-Olam
(published in 1940, with an essay on Beilinson by B. Katznelson)
and Ba-Derekh le-Aẓma’ut (1949). One of the main hospitals
in the Tel Aviv area was named after him.
Bibliography: Ẓiyyun le-Moshe Beilinson (supplement to
Davar, fasc. no. 3792, Nov. 9, 1937, includes a bibliography of his
writings).
[Getzel Kressel]
BEILIS, MENAHEM MENDEL (1874–1934), victim of a
*blood libel charge in Russia in 1911. On March 20, 1911, the
mutilated body of Andrei Yushchinsky, a 12-year-old boy, was
discovered in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. The monarchist
rightist press immediately launched a vicious anti-Jewish
campaign, accusing the Jews of using human blood for ritual
purposes. At the funeral of Yushchinsky, leaflets circulating
the blood libel were distributed by members of the reactionary
“Black Hundred” (“*Union of Russian People”) organization.
Meanwhile the police investigation traced the murder to
a gang of thieves associated with a woman, Vera Cheberiak,
notorious for criminal dealings. However, the reactionary antisemitic
organizations led by the “Black Hundred” pressured
the antisemitic minister of justice, I.G. Shcheglovitov, to conduct
the investigation of the crime as a ritual murder. Accordingly,
the chief district attorney of Kiev disregarded the police
information and instead looked for a Jew on whom to blame
the crime, through whom the entire Jewish people could be
publicly indicted.
In July 1911, a lamplighter testified that on March 12, the
day Yushchinsky disappeared, he had seen him playing with
two other boys on the premises of the brick kiln owned by a
Jew, Zaitsev. He also alleged that a Jew had suddenly appeared
and kidnapped Yushchinsky, pulling him toward the brick
kiln. On the strength of this testimony, Mendel Beilis, the superintendent
of the brick kiln, was arrested on July 21, 1911, and
sent to prison, where he remained for over two years. A report
was submitted to Czar Nicholas II that Beilis was regarded by
the judiciary as the murderer of Yushchinsky.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 267