JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

and the crafts and did not work in agriculture. There was some
kind of understanding between Berbers and Jews about the
occupational structure of each group, enabling each to earn
a livelihood. They also shared religious rituals and customs.
For example, at Shavuot the Berbers of Libya poured water on
Jews as one of their customs.
The Mossad study referred to Jewish life in Berber society
at the end of its existence. In the village of Gourama in
southeast Morocco, for example, there were 285 Jews, 73% of
them below the age of 30. About 20% of the families had eight
members, 50% fewer that seven persons. Seven Jews were
tailors, seven farmers, five merchants, and two butchers. Although
more research is needed it seems that these figures
characterize Jewish life in the Berber villages.
Bibliography: H. Fournel, Les Berbères (1875), 32–41; S.
Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord, 1 (1920), 236–343; E.F.
Gauthier, Le passé de l’Afrique du Nord (1942), 140ff., 225–44, 270ff.,
439; Simon, in: Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 26 (1946),
1–31, 105–45; M. Simon, Verus Israel (Eng. 1948), index; Hirschberg, in
Zion, 22 (1957), 10–20; idem, in: Journal of African History, 4 (1963),
313–39; Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 9–36; N. Slouschz, Hébraeo-Phéniciens
et Judéo-Berbères (1908); idem, Travels in North Africa (1927),
453–88, passim; A.N. Chouraqui, Between East and West (1968). Add.
Bibliography: M. Shokeid, “Jewish Existence in a Berber Environment,”
in: Sh. Deshen and W.P. Zenner (eds.), Jews among Muslims…
(1996), 109–20; E. Goldberg, “Ecologic and Demographic
Aspects of Rural Tripolitanian Jewry 1853–1949,” in: International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 2 (1971), 245–65; E. Goldberg and H.
Goldberg, Cave Dwellers and Citrus Growers: Jewish Community in
Libya and Israel (1972); E. Goldberg, “Communal Organization of
the Jews of Tripolitania during the Late Ottoman Period,” in: Jewish
Political Studies Review, 5:3–4, (Fall 5754/1993), 77–95; idem, “The
‘Maskil’ and the ‘Mequbbal’; Mordecai Ha-Cohen and the Grave of
Rabbi Shim’on Lavi in Tripoli,” in: H.E. Goldberg (ed.), Sephardi and
Middle Eastern Jewries (1996), 168–80.
[David Corcos / Haim Sadoun (2nd ed.)]
BERCOVICI, KONRAD (1882–1961), U.S. novelist. Born in
Romania, Bercovici used his experiences as an investigator for
a controversial exposé, Crimes of Charity (1917). He wrote several
books about the gypsies, including Ghitza and Other Romances
of Gypsy Blood (1919) and Story of the Gypsies (1928).
His other works include Savage Prodigal (1948), a biography of
Rimbaud; Dust of New York (1919), set in the Lower East Side;
Main Entrance (1932); and Exodus (1947), the story of Moses.
His autobiography, It’s the Gypsy in Me, appeared in 1941.
BERCOVITCH, PETER (1879–1942), Canadian labor lawyer,
politician, and Jewish community leader. Bercovich was
born in Montreal. The son of Romanian immigrants, he attended
Université Laval à Montreal and McGill University
before entering legal practice. He was an activist on behalf of
Montreal’s underprivileged Jewish workers and was soon a
favorite speaker at many community political meetings and
rallies of fraternal, charitable, and social organizations in the
city’s Jewish quarters. He represented the workers during the
Bercovitch, Sacvan
protracted and bitter strikes in the Montreal men’s clothing
industry in 1916 and 1917, forcing improvement in labor conditions
from the mostly Jewish manufacturers.
Bercovich became the first president of the Jewish Immigrant
Aid Society and in the 1920s joined the Jewish community’s
court battle for equal rights for Jews in Quebec’s schools,
insisting on an accommodation within existing structures
rather than a separate Jewish school system. A prominent
Liberal Party member, Bercovich was elected to the Quebec
Legislative Assembly for Montreal’s Saint-Louis constituency
in 1916 and was re-elected six times. He fought for a solution
to the school question and supported measures to help the
disadvantaged. He also shepherded a bill through the Quebec
Assembly which validated Jewish marriages and authorized
rabbis to keep registers of civil status. In 1938 Bercovich was
elected to the federal House of Commons, where he served
until his death.
[Gerald Tulchinsky (2nd ed.)]
BERCOVITCH, SACVAN (1933– ), U.S. literary scholar.
Bercovitch was born in Montreal of poor Ukrainian immigrant
parents, both of whom were idealistic communists. His
mother, Bryna, enlisted in the Red Army in 1917 and fought
in the civil wars following the Revolution; his father, Alexander,
an artist who had studied in Palestine, St. Petersburg,
and Munich, had been conscripted into, and deserted from,
the Russian Army during World War I. They immigrated to
Canada in 1926. Bercovitch, who spoke Yiddish and French
in childhood before learning English, was named after Sacco
and Vanzetti.
Bercovitch began his higher education at the New School
in New York and at Reed College in Oregon, but dropped out
to live for four years in a left-wing kibbutz in Israel, where he
met his first wife. He returned to Canada in 1958 and while
working at a supermarket in Montreal attended night classes
at Sir George Williams College (today Concordia College),
where he earned his B.A. in 1961. He received his M.A. in
1962 and Ph.D. in 1965 from Claremont Graduate School in
California. He taught at Brandeis (1966–68), the University
of California, San Diego (1968–70), Columbia (1970–83), and
finally Harvard (1983–2002), where he subsequently became
professor emeritus and Powell M. Cabot Research Professor
of American Literature. He was a visiting professor or lecturer
at many universities around the world.
Bercovitch’s scholarly work, growing out of his fascination
with (and resistance to, in his words) American culture,
has focused primarily on the formation of the American character
and of American myth, what he has called the “symbolic
construction of America,” through an examination of classic
American literature from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
He is the author of several influential works of scholarship,
including The Puritan Origins of the American Self (1975), The
American Jeremiad (1978), and The Office of “The Scarlet Letter”
(1991); editor or coeditor of the equally influential collec-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 401