JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa and established
a molecular spectroscopy section, opening up the
study of nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1959, together with
W.G. Schneider and J.A. Pople, Bernstein coauthored High
Resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, a pioneering
text in the field of Raman spectroscopy. In 1973 he
cofounded the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy and served as
coeditor until 1978.
Among other honors, Bernstein was awarded a fellowship
in the Royal Society of Canada in 1953 and, the next year,
in the Chemical Institute of Canada. He received the Herzberg
Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Canada in 1978. In
1980 the International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy established
the Harold Bernstein Award in Physical Chemistry
for graduate students at Ottawa’s two universities.
[Ruth Rossing (2nd ed.)]
BERNSTEIN, HARRY (1909–1993), U.S. historian. Born
and educated in New York City, in 1958 he became professor
of history at Brooklyn College. Bernstein’s historical interests
covered the post-18th century in geographical areas such as
Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He emphasized regional
factors in historical development. This approach appears in
his textbook Modern and Contemporary Latin America (1952).
Among his other works are Origins of Inter-American Interest,
1700–1812 (1945), a pioneer study of economic and political
ties between Pennsylvania, New York, and New England
and portions of the Spanish Empire in America; Dom Pedro II
(1973); Venezuela and Colombia (1974); The Brazilian Diamond
in Contracts, Contraband, and Capital (1988); and The Lord
Mayor of Lisbon (1989).
BERNSTEIN, HENRI-LEON (1876–1953), French playwright.
Bernstein was born in Paris, and during his early period
(1900–1914) wrote powerful, realistic plays depicting the
cruelty of modern life and society. The best known of these are
La Rafale (1905), Le Voleur (1907), Samson (1908), Israël (1908),
and Le Secret (1913). Some of his plays deal with the Jew’s position
in modern society. There are echoes of the *Dreyfus case
in Israël, which deals with one of the tragic results of assimilation.
The young leader of an antisemitic movement discovers
that his own father is a Jew. Overwhelmed by the revelation
and unable to accept his new status, the young man is eventually
driven to suicide. The plays written from 1918 to 1938 place
increasing emphasis on the psychological problems of their
heroes. To this period belong Judith (1922), Félix (1926), Mélo
(1929), and Espoir (1936). The theme of antisemitism periodically
recurs, and Nazism is attacked in Elvire (1940). During
World War II, Bernstein lived in the United States. Although
he continued writing after 1945, tastes had changed, and his
plays declined in popularity.
Bibliography: L. Le Sidaner, Henri Bernstein (1931); P.
Bathile, Henri Bernstein, son oeuvre (1931); H. Clovard, Histoire de la
littérature française du symbolisme à nos jours, 1 (1947).
[Denise R. Goitein]
bernstein, ignatz
BERNSTEIN, HERMAN (1876–1935), U.S. journalist, born
in Neustadt-Schirwirdt (Vladislavov), Lithuania; one of the
first to expose the Protocols of the *Elders of Zion forgery. Bernstein
went to the United States from Russia in 1893 and wrote
in Yiddish and English. His first book was With Master Minds
(1912), a collection of interviews with European personalities.
In 1914 he founded the Yiddish daily Der Tog (The Day), which
became a recognized organ of liberal Jewish opinion. He was
its editor until 1916 and editor in chief of the *American Hebrew
until 1919. During World War I, Bernstein made an onthe-spot
study of Jewish conditions in Eastern Europe and
stimulated the organization of relief for Jewish war victims.
In 1917, when he was correspondent of the New York Herald,
he discovered 65 telegrams which had been exchanged between
the German kaiser and the czar between 1904 and
1907, and published them as The Willy-Nicky Correspondence
(1918). In 1921 Bernstein published The History of a Lie (1928),
a book which was among the first exposures of the notorious
Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a forgery. He also instituted
legal proceedings against Henry Ford, who had helped
to circulate the Protocols and had allowed anti-Semitic articles
based on them to appear in his weekly The Dearborn Independent.
Bernstein’s postwar interviews for the daily press
were reprinted as Celebrities of Our Times (1925) and The
Road to Peace (1926). He wrote a study of Herbert Hoover
in 1928. Bernstein served as United States envoy to Albania
from 1931 to 1933.
[Sol Liptzin]
BERNSTEIN, IGNATZ (1836–1909), Yiddish folklorist and
collector of proverbs. Born in Vinnitsa (now Ukraine), Bernstein
was the son of a wealthy family of sugar merchants,
and as a rich industrialist in Warsaw he was able to indulge
in his hobby of collecting the folklore of many cultures. He
accumulated one of the world’s richest libraries in this field.
Bernstein published a two-volume illustrated catalog of his
collection of books and manuscripts (1900, 19682). He traveled
through Europe, North Africa, and Palestine, and for
35 years collected Yiddish proverbs current among the Jews
of Russia, Poland, and Galicia. He published 2,056 Yiddish
proverbs in Mordecai Spector’s annual Hoyzfraynd (“Family
Friend,” 1888–89). Two decades later the number of proverbs
had grown to 3,993, which he published in a magnificent volume
Yidishe Shprikhverter un Rednsartn (“Jewish Proverbs
and Sayings,” 1908, 1912, 1948, 1988). In the same year he published
his collection of 227 Yiddish proverbs concerned with
sex under the Latin title Erotica et Rustica (1908, 19182, 1975).
Bernstein helped to found, and also supported, the central
Jewish library in Warsaw.
Bibliography: Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1928), 373–5; LNYL, 1
(1956), 407–8; J. Shatzky, Geshikhte fun Yidn in Varshe, 3 (1953), 325–8.
Add. Bibliography: G. Weltman and M. Zuckerman (eds.), Yiddish
Sayings Mama Never Taught You (1975 repr. and trans. of Erotica
et Rustica).
[Sol Liptzin and Charles Cutter / Benjamin Sadock (2nd ed.)]
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 479