JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

God is good, and that he has a knowledge of what is best for
man, and the power to protect him. To trust in God does not
mean that one should neglect one’s work, leaving everything
to Him, but rather that one should conscientiously attempt to
carry out one’s duties, trusting that God will remove any obstacles
which lie in the way of their fulfillment. While man has
the freedom to will and choose, the realization of his actions
is dependent on God’s will. Further, a sound spiritual life requires
sincerity, a perfect correspondence between man’s conscience
and behavior. Man’s intentions must coincide with his
actions in aiming toward the service of God. Humility, repentance,
and self-examination are also essential. Another virtue
is asceticism or temperance. Baḥya considers total asceticism,
involving the breaking of all social ties, an ideal rarely attained
in the biblical past and hardly to be recommended in the present.
Actually, he recommends the pursuit of the middle way
prescribed by the revealed Law, defining the genuine ascetic
as one who directs all his actions to the service of God, while
at the same time fulfilling his functions within society. The
observance of these virtues leads to the highest stage of the
spiritual life, the love of God. True love of God is the ardor of
the soul for union with the Divine Light, a concept of a distinctly
mystic character. Baḥya does not, however, develop this
concept in all its implications. The love of God, in his view, is
a synthesis of the degrees of perfection described above, but
does not go beyond them. The lover of God, such as described
by him, keeps at a distance from his loved one. Despite Baḥya’s
dependence upon Muslim mysticism, which is here more pronounced
than elsewhere in the work, his teaching remains in
the line of Jewish tradition, and he cannot be called a mystic
in the strict sense of the term. It has been definitely established
that the Judeo-Arabic Neo-platonic tract, Kitāb Maʿanī al Nafs
(ed. by I. Goldziher, 1907; translated into Hebrew by I. Broydé
as Sefer Torat ha-Nefesh, 1896) at one time attributed to Baḥya,
was not written by him (see *Baḥya (Pseudo)).
Bibliography: Husik, Philosophy, 80–105; Guttmann,
Philosophies, 104–10; Kokowzoff, in: Sefer Zikkaron… S. Poznański
(1927), 13–21; G. Vajda, La théologie ascétique de Baḥya ibn Paquda
(1947); idem, in: REJ, 102 (1937), 93–104; M. Sister, in: Bericht der
Lehranstalt fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 50 (1936), 33–75;
idem, in: MGWJ, 81 (1937), 86–93; D. Kaufmann, Meḥkarim be-Sifrut
Yemei ha-Beinayim (1962), 11–77; Kaufmann, Schriften, 2 (1910),
1–98; D.H. Baneth, in: Sefer Magnes (1938), 23–30; Ramos Gil, in:
Archivo de Filologia Aragonesa, 3 (1950), 129–80; idem, in: Sefarad,
11 (1951), 305–38; idem, in: ME’AH, 1 (1952), 85–148; J.H. Schirmann,
Shirim Ḥadashim min ha-Genizah (1966), 203–8; Davidson, Oẓar, 4
(1933), 370.
[Georges Vajda]
BAIA-MARE (Hg. Nagybánya), mining and industrial town
in Transylvania, Romania, within Hungary until 1918 and
between 1940 and 1944. The prohibition against Jewish settlement
in Hungarian mining towns (issued in 1693) was
abolished in 1848. The oldest document indicating a Jewish
presence dates from the year 1664 and mentions a Jew trading
in the locally mined metal. In a document dated 1725 the
baiersdorf
absence of the Jews is noted. In 1850 Jewish artisans, businessmen,
and farmers began to settle in Baia-Mare. Subsequently
Jews did much to develop local commerce and industry.
A community was organized in 1860, and a burial
society founded in 1862. The first synagogue was opened in
1887. During the *Tisza-Eszlar blood libel case in 1882, a mob
attacked the synagogue and pillaged it. The community always
remained Orthodox, and Satmar Hasidism (see *Teitelbaum)
had a strong following. There was also a flourishing Zionist
movement. In the period between the two world wars there
was increasing tension between the ḥasidic community and
the Zionists. The Jewish population numbered 701 in 1890 (out
of a total of 9,838); 1,402 in 1910 (out of 12,877); 2,030 in 1930
(out of 13,904); and 3,623 in 1941 (out of 21,404).
[Yehouda Marton / Paul Schveiger (2nd ed.)]
Holocaust Period
Between the two world wars the Jewish population suffered
from attacks by the Romanian Iron Guard. Between 1941
and 1944, the town served as the headquarters of Labor Service
Battalion No. X, the recruitment center for many of the
Jewish males of military age in Northern Transylvania. The
Battalion was under the command of Lt. Col. Imre Reviczky
(1896–1957), a decent Hungarian officer who saved a large
number of Jews after the German occupation in 1944 by recruiting
them into labor service and thus rescuing them from
deportation. In 1962 he was posthumously recognized by Yad
Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.
The roundup of the Jews of Baia Mare began on May 3,
1944, together with those from Northern Transylvania. The
ghetto for the Jews of Baia-Mare was established in the vacant
lots of the Koenig Glass Factory; at its peak, it held close to
4,000 victims. The approximately 2,000 Jews from the communities
in the District of Baia-Mare, including Alsófernezely,
Hagymáslápos, Kapnikbánya, Láposbánya, Misztófalu,
Nagysikárló, Tomány, and Zazár, were concentrated in a stable
and barn in Valea Burcutului (Hung. Borpatak), which could
accommodate only 200 people; the others had to be quartered
outdoors. The 5,917 Jews concentrated in these two ghettos
were deported to Auschwitz in two transports on May 31 and
June 5, 1944, respectively.
[Randolph Braham (2nd ed.)]
The Jewish population in Baia-Mare numbered 950 in
1947. Subsequent emigration to Israel, Western Europe, and
the United States reduced the community considerably. In
1969 it numbered 120 families. In 2004 a very small number
of Jews remained in the town.
Bibliography: Magyar Zsidé Lexikon (1929), 626. Add.
Bibliography: R.L. Braham, Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust
in Hungary (19942); PK Romanyah, 86–89.
BAIERSDORF, village in Bavaria, Germany, formerly the
summer residence of the margraves of Kulmbach-Bayreuth.
Tombstones in the Jewish cemetery indicate the presence of
Jews in Baiersdorf at the end of the 14th century, although the
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