JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ernstein-cohen, miriam
States. Born in Russia, he received a traditional education and
contributed articles to Hebrew literary magazines. In 1870 he
emigrated to the United States and founded the first Yiddish
paper Di Post. (J.K. Buchner’s Di Yidishe Tsaytung, although
published earlier in 1870, appeared only three or four times.)
In 1871 Bernstein founded the first Hebrew newspaper in the
United States, Ha-Ẓofeh ba-Areẓ ha-Ḥadashah, which survived
until 1876. Afterward he became a successful businessman and
a patron of the Yiddish theater.
Bibliography: B.Z. Eisenstadt, Ḥakhmei Yisrael ba-Amerikah
(1903), 20–22; M. Davis, in: Sefer ha-Yovel li-Khevod Alexander
Marx (1950), 115–41; Kressel, Leksikon, 1 (1965), 374.
[Eisig Silberschlag]
BERNSTEIN-COHEN, MIRIAM (1895–1991), actress and
pioneer of the theater in Israel. Born in Romania, the daughter
of Jacob *Bernstein-Kogan, she was educated in Russia and
took a degree in medicine. Turning to the stage she worked
for a time in the Russian theater. In 1921 she went to Palestine
and joined David Davidow’s (d. 1976) company known as
the “Hebrew Theater.” When the group dissolved in 1923, she
and other members went to Germany to study stage work. In
Berlin she met Menahem *Gnessin and helped him to organize
the Teatron Ereẓ Israeli. She returned with the company
to Palestine in 1924 and worked with it until its merger with
the *Habimah Theater a few years later. Subsequently she appeared
with various companies, gave solo performances in
Palestine and abroad, and eventually joined the Cameri Theater
in Tel Aviv. She translated plays and stories by de Maupassant,
Tolstoy, Henri Barbusse, and Pearl Buck. In 1975 she
was awarded the Israel Prize for the arts.
[Mendel Kohansky]
BERNSTEIN-KOGAN (Cohen), JACOB (1859–1929),
Russian Zionist leader. Bernstein-Kogan, who was born in
Kishinev, studied medicine in St. Petersburg and Dorpat. After
the wave of pogroms in southern Russia in 1881, he devoted
himself to Ḥibbat Zion and Zionism. As a delegate to the
First Zionist Congress, he was elected to the Zionist Actions
Committee. He administered an information center called the
Zionist “post office,” which informed Zionist branches in Russia,
numbering about one thousand, of developments in the
movement. He was a leading member and ideologist of the
*Democratic Fraction (1901) and was one of the leaders of the
Russian Zionist opposition to the *Uganda Scheme. Settling
in Ereẓ Israel in 1907, he worked as a doctor in Lower Galilee
and in Petaḥ Tikvah. He was a founder of the Medical Association
of Ereẓ Israel (1908). Conflicts with the conservative
settlers of Petaḥ Tikvah induced him to return to Kishinev
in 1910. He moved to Ereẓ Israel again in 1925, but accepted
a proposal of the *American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
to serve as a physician in the Jewish agricultural settlements
in the Ukraine.
Bibliography: M. Bernstein-Cohen (ed.), Sefer Bernstein-
Cohen (1946); I. Klausner, Oppoziẓyah le-Herzl (1960), index; D. Smi-
lansky, Im Benei Dori (1942), 51–59; Tidhar, 1 (1947), 192–3; A.L. Jaffe
(ed.), Sefer ha-Kongress (19502), 307–10; J. Yaari-Poleskin, Ḥolemim
ve-Loḥamim (19643), 89–92.
[Yehdua Slutsky]
BERNSTEIN-SINAIEFF, LEOPOLD (1867–1944), French
sculptor. He was born in Vilna to an Orthodox family. He
began to study drawing before moving to Paris at the age
of fourteen. In Paris he studied under Rodin and Dalou
and first exhibited at the Salon des Champs Elysées in 1890.
He executed statues, portraits, groups of figures, and funerary
monuments, and made busts in bronze and marble of
important figures such as Pope Leo XIII. He received the Order
of the Legion of Honor and his sculpture Ezra Mourning
was acquired by the French nation. When the Germans
occupied France they destroyed the sculpture Youth and
Age to which Bernstein-Sinaieff had devoted over ten years.
The Nazis arrested him and sent him to the prison camp
at Drancy. Two weeks later he was released, only to be reinterned
and sent to an extermination camp where he was
killed.
BEROR ḤAYIL (Heb. לִיַח רֹ ורְ ּב), place in southern Israel,
8½ mi. (14 km.) S.E. of Ashkelon. In Byzantine times the
town was called Bouriron (Vita Sabeae, 10). It was the place
where R. *Johanan b. Zakkai moved and taught after his stay
in Yavneh. When the performance of Jewish marriages was
prohibited under Emperor Hadrian, in the second century
C.E., the inhabitants of Beror Ḥayil announced a clandestine
marriage ceremony by putting a candle on the window sill
(Sanh. 32b). Beror Ḥayil is now a kibbutz affiliated with Iḥud
ha-Kibbutzim. It was founded on May 4, 1948, during the War
of Independence, with the aim of reestablishing contact with
the Jewish settlements spread over the northern Negev at a
point where the Arabs had repeatedly cut off Jewish traffic to
and from the south. The kibbutz was set up overnight. The
initial settling group, pioneers from Egypt, was later joined
by immigrants from Brazil, Uruguay, and other countries.
In 1968 the kibbutz had a population of 520, dropping to 462
in 2002. Its economy was based on intensive farming (field
crops, greenhouses, dairy cattle, orchards) and various small
enterprises (software, a frozen pastry plant, and an educational
tourist center). In the early 1960s, the *Ḥeleẓ oilfield
expanded southward when reserves were discovered at Beror
Ḥayil (their exploitation was in no way connected, however,
with the economy of the kibbutz).
[Efraim Orni]
BEROSUS (Berossus = Bel-Usur?; c. 330–250 B.C.E.), priest
of Bel (Marduk) at Babylon, author of a history in Greek of
Babylon (Chaldaika or Babyloniaka) in three books. This work,
dedicated to Antiochus I, is extant only in fragments, particularly
in *Alexander Polyhistor, *Josephus, the Church Father
*Eusebius, and the Byzantine compiler George Syncellus. The
first book described Babylonia and the creation and explained
Chaldean astrology, the second covered the kings before the
486 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3