JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Backman, Jules
Democrats, and was closely associated, as friend and political
adviser, with W. Averell Harriman. In 1939 Backer purchased
the New York Post, became its publisher and editor, and imbued
it with a strong liberal outlook. His former wife, Dorothy
*Schiff, assumed control of the newspaper after their divorce
in 1942. Backer had a deep interest in music and drama,
sponsoring theatrical productions and writing plays. His novel
Appearance of a Man was published in 1966. Backer’s Jewish
activities date from the early 1930s when he became alarmed
at the rise of Nazism. He visited Germany and Poland in 1933,
1934, and 1936, urging Jews to emigrate, and was active in
American organizations aiding refugees. Among the Jewish
groups with which he was affiliated are the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee, American ORT, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, and American Jewish Committee.
Bibliography: New York Times (July 20, 1966).
[Morton Rosenstock]
BACKMAN, JULES (1910–1982), U.S. Reform lay leader.
Backman was born in New York and received his D.C.S. from
New York University in 1935. He became an economic advisor
to federal and state governments, a professor at NYU, and
an editorial writer for the New York Times. Backman served
as national chairman of the Reform Jewish Appeal (1965–69)
and was a member of the executive committee of the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations. He was elected to the
Board of Governors at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion in 1963, rising to become its chairman from
1976 until his death. Backman, who was instrumental in relocating
the New York school of HUC-JIR to its present home
near Washington Square and the NYU campus, received the
seminary’s American Judaism Award in 1970.
[Bezalel Gordon (2nd ed.)]
BACON, HIRSCH LEIB (1875–1928), ḥazzan. Hirsch Leib
Bacon was born in Kolbuszow into the Bacon family of cantors.
He studied in the yeshivah in Tarnow and during the period
of his studies sang with Cantor Eliyahu Brandsdorfer. He
moved to Nowy Sacz and established a choir that performed
ḥasidic melodies and Psalms. In 1905 he was appointed cantor
in the great synagogue of Chryzanow. He composed music
for the Sabbath and holiday prayers, and for other occasions.
He wrote hundreds of compositions. His son, Prof. Yitzhak
Bacon, chairman of the department of Yiddish at Ben-Gurion
University in Beersheba, is now publishing his father’s compositions,
which he wrote down from memory. In 1919 Hirsch
Leib Bacon moved to Berlin and served as cantor in the bet
midrash at Grenadierstrasse 37 until 1924, when he returned
to Chryzanow.
[Akiva Zimmerman]
BACON, ISRAEL (1910–1943), ḥazzan. Bacon was born in
Chryzanow, to a family of cantors, originating from Kolbus-
zow in Galicia. He was the son of Hirsch Leib Bacon. At the
age of nine he went with his parents to Berlin and sang in his
father’s choir. At the age of eleven he was asked by the Jewish
theater in Berlin to sing at a performance. His father did
not approve and as a result he returned to Chryzanow with
his son. Israel Bacon studied in the yeshivot of Tschebin and
Bobov. At the age of 21 he appeared in various cities of Europe.
He served as a cantor in Czechoslovakia and sang in
concerts in London, Hamburg, Antwerp, and Berlin, where
he also participated in activities of the Kulturbund. In Berlin
he produced several records, including selections of Psalms
and songs in Yiddish and Hebrew. Among his piano accompanists
on these records was the musician Arno *Nadel. In 1939
he was appointed cantor at the bet midrash “Ahavat Re’im”
in Cracow, but when he arrived there, the war broke out. He
was transferred to the Tarnow ghetto where he encouraged
the Jews with his singing. In 1943 he was taken to the extermination
camp in Belzec where he was killed.
[Akiva Zimmerman]
°BACON, ROGER (c. 1214–1294), English philosopher and
Hebraist. Bacon studied at Oxford (probably) and – from 1236
at the latest – Paris. He learned Hebrew, and his transliterations,
reflecting Sephardi pronunciation, imply Jewish assistance.
Bacon’s advanced criticisms of scientific and theological
methodology led Bonaventura, general of the Franciscans, to
stop his teaching at Paris; after Stephen Tempier’s Paris condemnation
(1277) of the 219 propositions and of magical instruction,
he was allegedly imprisoned for 14 years by Jerome
de Ascoli, later Pope Nicholas IV. Meanwhile, in 1266, Clement
IV (Guy du Foulques) had directed him to disregard his
order’s instructions and to write up, in extenso, his scholarship
and views on ecclesiastical abuses. Bacon’s resultant writings
contain frequent references to Hebrew as the fountainhead
of all philosophical knowledge and as indispensable for Bible
study, all Latin versions being corrupt. While criticizing *Andrew
of Saint Victor for his addiction to Jewish exegesis and
deprecating contemporary acknowledgment of Andrew as authoritative,
Bacon commended the former’s resort to the original
Hebrew text. He extolled Robert Grosseteste’s endeavors to
promote Hebrew studies, and a certain “homo sapientissimus”
(probably William of Mara) for pursuing them.
Besides substantial competence in biblical Hebrew, Bacon
evinced interest in the Jewish calendar and a grasp of
linguistic science; he appreciated the affinity of Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Arabic as comparable to that of the Romance languages.
He contemplated writing a Hebrew grammar, and a
fragment – the earliest known Hebrew grammar by a named
gentile scholar in the West – survives (Cambridge Ms. Ff. 6.
13; appended to Bacon’s Greek Grammar, ed. E. Nolan, 1902).
Hirsch, who assembled and translated the relevant passages
in Bacon’s works, tentatively connected some correspondence
(Ms. Toulouse 402) regarding Hebrew grammar and
40 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3