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erenson, senda
til 1923 and later in the U.S.S.R. Berenson resigned from the
foreign service in 1930, when the National Democratic Party
(N.D. = Endeks) became a powerful force in the ruling Pilsudski
regime. He resumed his legal practice and was defense
counsel in several political trials of historical significance. He
died in the Warsaw ghetto. His writings include Z sali śmierci:
Wraźenia obróncy politycznego (“From the Death Cell: Memoirs
of a Defense Counsel in Political Cases,” 1929).
Bibliography: Hafftka, in: I. Schiper et al. (eds.), Żydzi
w Polsce odrodzonej, 2 (1933), 250; EG, 1 (1953), 249–50. Add. Bibliography:
E. Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszaskiego, 491–92,
624–25; idem, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War
(1974), 82.
BERENSON (Abbott), SENDA (Valvrojenski; 1868–1954),
“Mother of Women’s Basketball” and a member of the Basketball
Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Born in Baltramentz (Butrimonys), a town near Vilna, Lithuania,
Berenson’s family immigrated to Boston when she was
seven, changing the family name from Valvrojenski to Berenson.
She became the first director of physical education
at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in January
1892, a month after James Naismith invented basketball
in nearby Springfield. Berenson visited Naismith to learn the
game and adopted it for her female students, organizing the
first official game of women’s basketball on March 22, 1893. It
featured the Smith sophomores against the freshmen, with no
male spectators allowed. Berenson introduced the first rules
of women’s basketball (1899), adapted to avoid the roughness
of the men’s game and stressing a refined game that favored
socialization and cooperation over competition and winning.
Her rules included dividing the court into three areas, with
two players permanently designated for each area; eliminated
stealing the ball; limited dribbling to three bounces; and restricted
a player from holding the ball longer than three seconds.
She was editor of Spalding’s Official Basketball Guide
for Women (1901–17) and chairwoman of the U.S. Women’s
Basketball Committee (1905–17). She left Smith in 1911 after
marrying Herbert Vaughan Abbott, a professor of English
at Smith, and chaired the physical education department at
the Mary A. Burnham School in Northampton until 1921. In
1934, she moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., where she died. She
was one of first three women elected to the Basketball Hall
of Fame (1985). Her brother was the art historian Bernard
*Berenson.
[Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)]
BERENSON, ZVI (1907–2001), Israel Supreme Court justice.
Berenson was born and educated in the Galilee. He received
a grant for excellence from the British High Commissioner
to study mathematics in England, where he also studied law.
Returning to Israel, he served as legal adviser of the Histadrut
(General Labor Federation) from 1934 until the creation of the
State of Israel in 1948. At the request of Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion, he drafted the Declaration of Independence. In
1950, he was named director general of the Labor Ministry,
and in 1954 he became a justice of the Supreme Court, where
he served for 23 years until his retirement in 1977. His decisions
were characterized by clarity, innovation, and a liberal
approach to protection of individual rights. His major contributions
were in administrative law, public tenders, torts, and
labor and family law. He emphasized the legal basis of High
Court of Justice decisions and judicial review of Knesset legislation
and government decisions. He played a key role in the
development of the Supreme Court ruling that administrative
decisions of the government require it to state the grounds for
them, the government’s obligation to carry out court decisions
and the right of the Supreme Court sitting as a court of
equity to award administrative damages. His name is associated
with several judicial precedents of public interest, such
as the interim order compelling Prime Minister Golda Meir
to allow television broadcasts on the Sabbath, equal allocation
of assets between a married couple, and simplification
of judicial procedures.
After retirement from the Supreme Court bench, Berenson
served as chair of the arbitration board for the public sector
for 17 years, until 1994.
[Leon Fine (2nd ed.)]
BERÉNY, RÓBERT (1887–1953), Hungarian painter and
graphic designer. Born and educated in Budapest, Berény
studied in Paris and Italy. On his return he joined the “Nyolcak,”
a progressive group of artists searching for new forms
of pictorial expression. In 1948 he was appointed professor
at the Academy of Creative Arts in Budapest. Berény’s early
work reflects the influence of Cézanne, while his later work
is more expressionistic. He painted a wide variety of subjects,
including life studies and landscapes. He was an outstanding
graphic artist whose posters maintained a high standard. His
Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (1906), The Lady Cellist (1929),
The Scrawl (1933), Ice-Carrying (1937), and The Student Painter
(1947) are in the Hungarian National Gallery. His portrait of
Béla Bartók is in the Bartók Archives, New York.
[Jeno Zsoldos]
BERESTECHKO (Pol. Beresteczko), small town in Volhynia,
Ukraine; until 1795 and from 1919 to 1939 within Poland. Jewish
settlement there is first mentioned in a document dated
1569. Until 1648 the number of Jews exceeded 1,000. About
200 families perished in Berestechko during the *Chmielnicki
massacres in 1648 -49. In the battle fought at Berestechko between
the Cossacks and Poles in 1651 some 1,000 Jews fought
on the Polish side, according to Nathan Nata *Hannover. There
were 872 Jews registered in the community in 1765, of whom
632 lived in the town. It was devastated by a pestilence at the
end of the 18th century. Rehabilitated shortly afterward, the
community numbered 1,927 in 1847, 2,251 in 1897 (45% of the
total population), and 2,210 in 1931 (total population 6,514).
Between the World Wars the economic situation deteriorated.
Most Jewish industry consisted of small enterprises process-
412 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3