JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

mans (under Hadrian) are contained in both the passage in the
Haggadah and in the Tosefta (Tosef., Ber. 2:14). Even after the
*Bar Kokhba War (132–35 C.E.), Bene-Berak remained a Jewish
city; Judah ha-Nasi visited it and was impressed by the extraordinary
fertility of its orchards and vineyards (Mid. Tanḥ.
to 26:9; TJ, Pe’ah 8:4, 20b). The same impression is reported by
the amora Rami b. Ezekiel (third century C.E.), who applied
to it the biblical phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey”
(Ket. 111b). The Crusaders called the city Bombrac and built
a fortress there to protect the approaches to Jaffa.
[Michael Avi-Yonah]
(2) One of the ten towns in Israel which form the metropolitan
area of Tel Aviv, about 3 mi. (5 km.) northeast of downtown
Tel Aviv, bordered on the north by the Yarkon River, on the
east by the main highway to the south and north, and on the
south and west by Ramat Gan. Bene-Berak was established
in 1924 by a group of 13 Orthodox families from Warsaw, Poland,
under the leadership of Rabbi Y. Gerstenkorn, who later
became the town’s first mayor. Until 1936 affairs were run by a
local committee, and from 1936 to 1949 by a local council, but
since 1950 Bene-Berak has been a township, comprising about
1,775 acres (7,100 dunams). The founders engaged mostly in
farming and by 1929 the settlement grew to 100 families. It had
4,500 inhabitants in 1941, 8,800 in 1948, 25,000 in 1955, and
64,700 in 1968. In the mid-1990s the population was approximately
125,000 and in 2002 about 138,900, making it the tenth
largest city in Israel, with a municipal area of 2.7 sq. mi. (7 sq.
km.). Its dynamic growth was due to its proximity to Tel Aviv,
and its special position as a place for a thoroughly Orthodox
population and way of life. As a suburb, Bene-Berak is interrelated
with the Tel Aviv nucleus for its public transportation,
wholesale and retail trade, entertainment, education on the
university level, and for employment – especially for white collar
workers in Tel Aviv who live in Bene-Berak. Bene-Berak
is known for its numerous yeshivot, headed by the Ponevezh
Yeshivah, founded in 1941 by Rabbi Joseph *Kahaneman. It
is also known for the strict public observance of the Sabbath,
holidays, and Jewish laws, one consequence of which is that
all its roads are closed to traffic on the Sabbath and holidays.
There are more than 200 synagogues, many of them for ḥasidic
rebbes, and closed ḥasidic neighborhoods like Zikhron Meir,
Vizhnitz, and Satmar (see *Satu Mare). Bene-Berak was the
home of Ḥazon Ish (Rabbi Abraham I. *Karelitz), who established
Tiferet Zion yeshiva. A Haredi College for academic
studies geared to observant students was founded in 1999. It
had around 100 students in 2002. The special character of the
city as a bastion of ultra-Orthodoxy, with most men studying
in the yeshivot rather than working, makes the city a center
of poverty as well. The city includes one secular neighborhood
– Pardes Katz.
Bene-Berak became one of Israel’s important industrial
areas and in 1969 had about 150 factories and numerous workshops
for food preserves, cigarettes, wool textiles, and other
branches, among them several of the country’s largest such
benedict
enterprises, employing about 8,000 workers. At the beginning
of the 21st century, the city had five industrial areas, with some
of the largest plants in Israel.
[Alexander Cohn / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)]
Bibliography: D.D. Luckenbill (ed.), The Annals of Sennacherib
(1924), 31; S. Klein (ed.), Sefer ha-Yishuv, 1 (1939), S.V.; EM,
2 (1965), 174; Press, Ereẓ, 1 (1951), 109; A. Cohn, “The Development
of Bene-Berak as a Satellite Town of Special Features” (Thesis, Technion
Haifa, 1969), Hebrew with English synopsis.
BENEDEK, THERESE F. (1892–1977), U.S. psychoanalyst
and psychiatrist. Born in Eger, Hungary, Benedek obtained
clinical experience in Budapest and Leipzig, and emigrated to
the United States in the early 1930s. She was appointed a staff
member at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1936. In
her research she concentrated on studying the psychological
implications of female sexual functions and the personal disturbances
associated with their impairment. She wrote (with
B.B. Rubenstein) The Sexual Cycle in Women (1947), Psychosexual
Functions in Women (1952), and Insight and Personality
Adjustment (1946).
°BENEDICT, name of 16 popes, several of whom had significant
contacts with Jews. BENEDICT VIII (1012–1024) ordered
the execution of a number of Roman Jews in 1020 or 1021, on
a charge that they had mocked the cross and thereby caused
an earthquake which killed a number of Christians. BENE-
DICT XII (1334–1342) gave proof of his conversionary zeal
when in 1320, while still bishop of Pamiers, he argued with a
certain Baruch who had been forced into Christianity during
the *Pastoureaux persecutions. He displayed the same zeal in
1338 by urging all Christians to aid in the pursuit of converted
Jews who changed their places of residence in order to revert
to Judaism. In 1335 he ordered the destruction of a synagogue
in Posen because it had been erected too near a Cistercian chapel.
He complained to King Pedro of Aragon in 1340 that Jews
and Muslims were erecting too many synagogues and mosques
and were enjoying too many contacts with Christians. At the
same time, he was deeply concerned over the report by Albert
II, duke of Austria, in 1338, that the Jews of *Passau had
been falsely accused of having desecrated the *Host. A similar
charge in *Nuremberg a few years previously had also proved
false. The pope now ordered the bishop of Passau not to permit
the Jews to suffer if they had been unjustly accused. BENEDICT
XIII (Peter de Luna, 1394–1417) does not belong to the apostolic
succession, since he is counted as an anti-pope during the
Great Schism of the Church. His hostility to Jews and Judaism
was evident during his period in Avignon (1394–1411). In 1396
he acted upon the accusation that the Jews of Geneva were
enjoying many privileges under the protection of the local authorities;
he also charged the leaders of the Avignon Jews with
exceeding their powers. In 1403 he granted a three-year moratorium
on debts owed by Christians to Jews. He did grant the
Jews of Toro (Castile), in 1404, the right to have a synagogue
in place of the two they had had before the persecutions in
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 329