JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

en eliezer, moshe
advocated the need to remove outposts of the settlers in the
territories. In primaries held for the Labor Party leadership in
December 2001 Ben-Eliezer ran against Avraham *Burg, winning
by a narrow majority. However, just before the elections
to the Sixteenth Knesset, Amram Mitzna defeated him in another
round of primaries for the party leadership.
[Susan Hattis Rolef (2nd ed.)]
BEN ELIEZER, MOSHE (1882–1944), Hebrew editor, author,
and translator. Ben Eliezer, who was born in Shchuchin,
near Vilna, became attracted to the Haskalah while studying
at Mir yeshivah, and joined the staff of the Hebrew daily Ha-
Zeman. From 1906 to 1910 he lived in the United States, where
he established Shibbolim (1909), a journal devoted to modern
Hebrew literature. Returning to Poland he edited several Hebrew
journals for young people, and spent some time after
World War I in Kovno as press officer for the Lithuanian Ministry
for Jewish Affairs. Immigrating to Palestine in 1925, he
joined the editorial staff of the newspaper Haaretz. His stories,
feuilletons, and translations appeared in the Hebrew press of
various countries and he also wrote and edited several series
of books for children. His works include the historical novels
Yerovam u-Reḥavam (“Jeroboam and Rehoboam,” 1939) and
Don Yosef Nasi (1945), the novel Gavri’el (1945), and translations
of works by Scott, Dickens, Conrad, Hawthorne, and
others.
Bibliography: N. Goren, Demuyyot be-Sifrutenu (1953),
69–74; H. Weiner, Pirkei Ḥayyim ve-Sifrut (1960), 94–95; F. Lachower,
Shirah u-Maḥashavah (1953), 236–8; Rabbi Binyamin, Mishpeḥot
Soferim (1960), 312–3.
[Getzel Kressel]
BENE MENASHE, name given to Judaizing groups from
northeast India mainly in the two Indian states of Mizoram
and Manipur. The Bene Menashe claim descent from the
tribe of Manasseh, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land
of Israel by the Assyrians over 2,700 years ago. Members of
the group include ethnic Chins, Lushais, Kukis, and Mizos.
Collectively they are often referred to as Shinlung. The movement,
if one can call it such, started in the 1950s as a by-product
of the experience of colonialism and Christian missions.
Remarkably, by the end of the 20th century several hundred
Shinlung had formally converting to Orthodox Judaism. Many
thousand more practiced a kind of Judaism. Others practiced
Christianity while thinking of themselves as descendants of
the ancient Israelites. By 2005 some 800 converts had settled
in Israel, helped by an organization called Shavei-Israel, a
Jerusalem-based group that attempts to give help and succor
to “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people. For the
most part the Shinlung do not see themselves as converts in
the usual sense of the term: like other such groups – one might
cite the *Bene Ephraim Telugu-speaking Jews of Andhra
Pradesh who believe themselves to be descended from the
Tribe of Ephraim – they believe that they are historically of
Jewish descent. This controversial claim has found little sup-
port among scholars, although a gifted Israeli essayist and
translator – Hillel Halkin – took up their cause in a colorful
account published in 2002. He was joined in 2005 by the Sephardi
chief rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar, who decided to formally
recognize the Bene Menashe as “descendants of Israel”
and agreed to dispatch a beit din from Israel to northeast India
to convert them.
Bibliography: S. Weil, “Double Conversion among the
‘Children of Menasseh,’” in: Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies
(Satya Narayana Ratha Festschrift Volumes), vol.1, Structure and
Progress, ed. G. Pfeffer and D. Behera (New Delhi, n.d.); T. Parfitt,
The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (2002); T. Parfitt and
E. Trevisan-Semi, Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism
(2002); H. Halkin, Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost
Tribe of Israel (2002); M. Samra, “Judaism in Manipur and Mizoram:
By-Product of Christian Mission,” in: The Australian Journal of Jewish
Studies, 6, no.1 (1992); idem, “The Tribe of Menasseh: ‘Judaism’
in the Hills of Manipur and Mizoram,” in: Man in India, 71/1 (1991);
idem, “Buallawn Israel: The Emergence of a Judaising Movement in
Mizoram, Northeast India,” in: L. Olson (ed.), Religious Change, Conversion
and Culture (1996).
[Tudor Parfitt (2nd ed.)]
BENESCH, ALFRED ABRAHAM (1879–1973), U.S. attorney
and civic leader. Benesch was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the
son of Bohemian immigrants. He established a law practice in
Cleveland and was elected to the Cleveland City Council in
1912. In 1914–15 he served as public safety director in Mayor
Newton D. Baker’s cabinet. Under Benesch’s direction the
first electric traffic signal lights were installed in Cleveland
on August 5, 1914, by the American Traffic Signal Company.
In 1922 Benesch gained prominence as a libertarian for his
fight against a proposed quota system for Jews at Harvard. His
public career was highlighted by 37 years of continuous service
on the Cleveland Board of Education (1925–62); he was
its president in 1933–34. Benesch made an immediate impact
on school policy when he successfully opposed compulsory
reserve military training in the city’s public high schools. He
was Ohio State Director of Commerce during 1935–39. Benesch
held many public and civic offices and was equally active
as a Jewish communal leader, serving as a trustee of many local
Jewish agencies.
[Judah Rubinstein]
BENEŠOV (Ger. Beneschau), town in Bohemia, the Czech
Republic. The community, first mentioned in 1419, was among
the earliest to be established in a seignorial town in *Bohemia.
Five Jewish families were living there in 1570. A community is
again mentioned there in 1845, numbering seven families in
1852. It was officially registered in 1893 with 786 persons (including
those living in 27 surrounding villages). Benešov was a
center of the Svaz *čechů-židů, Czecho-Jewish movement, and
of the struggle against the German-language Jewish school at
the end of the 19th century. In 1930 the community numbered
237 (2.8% of the total population), 24 of whom declared their
nationality as Jewish. The anti-Jewish laws imposed during the
340 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3