JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

figure in the Jewish community and was president of the Tunisian
*ORT and other communal organizations.
[David Corcos]
BESSIS, JESHUA (1773–1860), Tunisian scholar. Bessis was
appointed chief rabbi of Tunis in 1847 and served in this office
until his death. He wrote responsa and a work on the Shulḥan
Arukh, only the section on Yoreh De’ah being published, part
of it under the title Avnei Ẓedek (1902) and part as Avnei Ẓedek
u-Me’orot Natan (1903). Bessis wrote introductions and approbations
for the books of Tunisian scholars. He engaged in
practical Kabbalah and was regarded as a saint; his grave became
a place of pilgrimage.
Bibliography: Arditti, in: Revue Tunisienne, 3 (1932), 102–3;
Hirschberg, Afrikah, 2 (1965), 148.
BESSO, HENRY (1905–1993), scholar of Sephardi studies.
Born in Salonica, Besso went to the College St. Jean Baptiste
de la Salle. He moved to New York after the death of his parents,
where he joined his brothers and worked with an exportimport
firm while pursuing his education in the evening at
the City College of New York, where he earned his B.A. (1931)
and later at Columbia University (1935). Because his firm collapsed
he became eligible for work under the provisions of the
WPA and began working as a teacher of French and Spanish in
New York’s Adult Education department and was soon training
teachers and creating curricula to assist his students. With
the world war looming, he was moved to Washington to train
Army Air Force and Navy officers and government officials
for their missions abroad and then became a research analyst
and speech writer for the Voice of America beginning many
decades of service to that agency.
In 1945 he was sent to Biarritz American University in
France and then to the Command School in Germany to teach
Spanish and French. While in Europe he lectured on Hispanic
and Judeo-Spanish language and culture. He became a respected
lecturer on Sephardi culture and a communal activist
in the Sephardi Jewish Brotherhood of America and was
for a time executive director of the World Sephardi Federation.
In 1963, he researched and edited a listing of 289 Judeo-
Spanish works he had uncovered at the Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C. To this day Ladino Books in the Library
of Congress: A Bibliography is still considered one of the definitive
bibliographic listings of the world’s great collections
of Judeo-Spanish literature. In 1967 he became one of the
founders of the American Society for Sephardic Studies at
Yeshiva University.
On the eve of his retirement in 1976, the Foundation for
the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture devoted
its Tract XI to him. Entitled Study of the Meaning of Ladino,
Judezmo and the Spanish-Jewish Dialect, it included reprints
of many of Besso’s articles and writings, with an extensive and
thorough bibliography of his works. The volume was dedicated
to Besso as “a most distinguished contemporary scholar,
beta israel
whose numerous and varied works on Sephardic culture and
folklore will always be remembered.”
[Efraim Zadoff (2nd ed.)]
BET (Heb. תי ּב ֵ ;ב), second letter of the Hebrew alphabet: a
voiced bilabial plosive [b] and voiced labiodental fricative [v]
(a positional variant); its numerical value is 2.
The earliest form of bet – in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions
– is the acrophonic pictograph of a house (bayit)
While in South Arabic its shape is and in Ethiopic , in the
Proto-Canaanite script the main stages of development are
→ → → . Variants of the latter form survive in the Phoenician
( , ), Hebrew ( , ), and Samaritan ( ) as well as
in the Greek ( → ) and Latin scripts.
The Aramaic bet like the dalet, resh, and ʿayin has an
open top already in the seventh century b.c.e. While in the
fifth century b.c.e. the downstroke has a diagonal flourish
, from the fourth century b.c.e. onward the downstroke is
vertical curving into a horizontal base; at the same time there
is a tendency to straighten the top of the letter: . In the early
Jewish script the tick on the left side of the top is the only
remnant of the half-circled head. Already in the Herodian period,
the base of the Jewish bet is written occasionally with a
separate left-to-right stroke . This fashion prevails, becomes
common in the Jewish bookhand, and the bet does not change
its basic shape during the ages: In some cursive trends, as in
the period of Bar Kokhba and today, the bet is written without
lifting the pen: . However, the Ashkenazi cursive developed
as follows: → → → .
Palmyrene bet follows the third-century b.c.e. Aramaic
and develops through into Syriac . The Nabatean bet
loses its top ; this form is adopted for Arabic ba, which later
is distinguished by a diacritic sign from (ta), (nun), and
(ya). See *Alphabet, Hebrew.
[Joseph Naveh]
BET AGLAYIM, a place mentioned by Eusebius (Onom.
48:19) 8 mi. (13 km.) S. of Gaza, near the sea coast, which he
erroneously identified with the biblical Beth-Hoglah (Josh.
15:6; 18:19–21). Bet Aglayim is most probably the ancient name
of the important Tell al-ʿAjjūl located about 4½ mi. (7 km.)
southwest of Gaza, which was excavated from 1929 to 1931 by
Sir Flinders Petrie (who identified it with ancient Gaza). The
remains at Tell al-ʿAjjūl date mainly from the Middle and Late
Bronze Ages and include Hyksos fortifications and graves, and
the palace of an Egyptian governor. Rich finds of gold, silver,
and jewelry were discovered in the tombs.
Bibliography: W.M.F. Petrie, Ancient Gaza, 5 vols. (1931–52);
Maisler, in: ZDPV, 56 (1933), 186ff.; Abel, Geog, 2 (1938), 265; Albright,
in: AJSLL, 55 (1938), 337–59.
[Michael Avi-Yonah]
BETA ISRAEL, ethno-religious group in Ethiopia which
claims to be of Jewish origin and which is attached to a form
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 499