JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

erlin, sir isaiah
nos. 3605–07. Add. Bibliography: L. Bergreen, As Thousands
Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (1990).
[Nicolas Slonimsky / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BERLIN, SIR ISAIAH (1909–1997), English philosopher and
political scientist. Born in Latvia, Berlin was taken to England
as a boy. He later studied at Oxford, where he lectured in philosophy
from 1932 and became the first Jewish Fellow of All
Souls College in 1938. During and after World War II he served
with the British Information Services in New York and with
the British embassies in Washington and Moscow. From 1957
Berlin was professor of social and political theory at Oxford,
and in 1966 he was appointed the first president of the newly
founded Wolfson College in Oxford. Berlin was awarded the
Order of Merit in 1971. In 1974 he was elected president of the
British Academy, of which he had been vice president from
1959 to 1961, the first Jew to be appointed to this office. In November
1978 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
His work was characterized by a strongly liberal attitude
to social and political questions. His Karl Marx (1939) examines
Marx’s thought within the context of the intellectual atmosphere
of the 19th century. In his The Hedgehog and the Fox
(1953), Berlin considers Tolstoy as a writer who vainly sought
some unifying thread in history. In Historical Inevitability (in:
Auguste Conte Memorial Lectures 1953–62, 1964) he opposes
the notion that events are inevitable and therefore predictable,
and that political conditions are not capable of being changed
by individuals. In Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), Berlin distinguishes
between those thinkers who have sought to found
liberty within a framework of mutual restraints while at the
same time recognizing the diversity of human needs and behavior,
and those who, espousing one all-embracing and dogmatic
notion of liberty, seek to “force men to be free” and thus
end by enslaving them. Among his other writings are The Age
of Enlightenment (1956), The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess
(1959), Four Essays on Liberty (1969), and numerous essays.
Berlin earned a considerable reputation as a scholar, teacher,
and conversationalist, and influenced generations of students
in Britain and in the United States, where he was visiting professor
at several universities. His long-standing ties with Israel
and Zionism were distinguished by personal friendships with
a number of Zionist leaders including Chaim *Weizmann. He
was a member of the editorial board publishing the Weizmann
letters and was a governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Berlin also served as president of the Jewish Historical
Society of England and was the first president of Wolfson College,
Oxford. He was certainly one of the most famous public
intellectuals in the English-speaking world at the time of his
death. In 1998 he published his reminiscences of 17 famous
people, Personal Impressions.
Add. Bibliography: J. Cray, Isaiah Berlin (1996); M. Ignatieff,
Isaiah Berlin: A Life (1998); H. Hardy, Flourishing: Letters
1928–1946 (2004); M. Lilla (ed.), The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001);
ODNB online.
[Brian Knei-Paz (Knapheis)]
BERLIN, ISAIAH BEN JUDAH LOEB (Isaiah Pick; 1725–
1799), rabbi and author. Berlin was known also as Isaiah Pick
after his father-in-law, Wolf Pick of Breslau, who supported
him for many years. He was born in Eisenstadt, Hungary, but
his father, an eminent talmudic scholar (who later became
rabbi of Pressburg), moved to Berlin where the young Berlin
studied under him. Later he studied under Ẓevi Hirsch Bialeh
(Ḥarif), the rabbi of Halberstadt, at the latter’s yeshivah.
In 1755 Berlin moved to Breslau where he engaged in business.
In 1793, when already advanced in years, he was elected
to a rabbinical post, being appointed to succeed Isaac Joseph
Te’omim as rabbi of Breslau. His election was marked by a dispute
between the members of the community and the local
maskilim, who had begun to organize themselves as a body
and opposed Berlin, who, despite his love of peace, openly
attacked their ideas. Berlin was elected by an overwhelming
majority. According to ḥasidic sources, Berlin was sympathetically
disposed toward that movement and extended a friendly
welcome to one of its emissaries, Jacob Samson of Spitsevka.
Berlin was renowned for his conciliatory attitude and for his
avoidance of all disputes. Characteristically, he called a work
She’elat Shalom (“A Greeting of Peace”), for “all my life I have
been careful not to treat my fellow men with disrespect, even
to the extent of not slighting them by faint praises.” As a result
of this moderation, leaders of the Breslau maskilim, such as
Joel Brill and Aaron Wolfsohn, frequently visited him. Berlin
corresponded on halakhic subjects with his brother-in-law
Joseph *Steinhardt, Ezekiel *Landau of Prague, Eleazar b.
Eleazar *Kallir, and Ephraim Zalman *Margolioth of Brody,
among others. His chief claim to fame rests not on his rabbinic
and halakhic but rather on his extensive literary activities
devoted to glosses and textual notes on talmudic literature.
He commented on the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, Alfasi,
Maimonides, the Arukh, and the whole corpus of the earlier
halakhic authorities. Of his collated texts, in which he notes
parallel passages and variant readings, the most important is
that on the Talmud, entitled Masoret ha-Shas (“Talmud Tradition”),
which supplements an earlier work by Joseph Samuel,
rabbi of Frankfurt. First published at Dyhernfurth (1800–04),
it has since been printed in every edition of the Talmud. Berlin
not only cites parallel passages, but also amends and compares
texts, displaying an acute critical faculty and a profound
grasp of history.
His other works are (1) She’elat Shalom (Dyhernfurth,
1786), a commentary on Aḥai of Shabḥa’s She’iltot, with
sources and notes entitled Rishon le-Zion; (2) Hafla’ah sheba-Arakhin,
glosses and annotations to Nathan b. Jehiel of
Rome’s Arukh (first published, part 1, Breslau, 1830, part 2,
Vienna, 1859), and thereafter in many editions of the Arukh;
(3) Minnei Targima, expositions on Targum Onkelos (Breslau,
1831); (4) Tosefot Rishon le-Ẓiyyon, notes and brief comments
on the Mishnah (first published at Sulzbach, 1783–85, and often
reprinted); (5) Kashot Meyushav (Koenigsberg, 1860), in
which all talmudic passages concluding with the word kashya
(“difficulty”) are answered; (6) Omer ha-Shikḥah, containing
456 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3