JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Among his many publications, Bailyn wrote The New England
Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (1955); Massachusetts
Shipping, 1697–1714 (with Lotte Bailyn, 1959); Education
in the Forming of American Society (1960); The Ideological Origins
of the American Revolution (1967), for which he received
the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes in 1968; The Origins of American
Politics (1968); The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974),
awarded the National Book Award in History in 1975; The Peopling
of British North America: An Introduction (1986); Voyagers
to the West (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize in history and
other awards; Faces of Revolution (1990); On the Teaching and
Writing of History (1994); and To Begin the World Anew: The
Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (2003).
Specializing in American colonial and revolutionary history,
Bailyn is known for meticulous research and for interpretations
that sometimes challenge conventional wisdom, especially
with regard to the causes and effects of the American
Revolution. Bailyn taught his students that history is primarily
about change and movement, and that however hard one
has to work to understand what the past was like, the deeper
challenge is to explain how one part of the past gave way to
another. And because change can only be described through
narrative, historians must be sensitive to all the matters of exposition
that make narrative effective, which always involves
understanding that expository decisions are as essential to historians
as their mastery of sources and all the other technical
skills on which historical scholarship depends.
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BAITLER, ZOMA (1908–1994), Uruguayan painter. Born
and educated in Lithuania. Baitler, an impressionist, went to
Uruguay in 1927 and exhibited for the first time at the “Free
Artists Salon” in 1931. He was one of the founders of the atelier
ETAP. Exhibitions of his work were held in North and South
America as well as in Israel. In 1936 he issued the Art Magazine
Perseo and wrote essays on art and on art criticism. In 1963 he
was appointed cultural assistant to the Uruguayan Embassy in
Israel for three years. His works are in the National and Municipal
Museums of Uruguay and Israel.
BAITOS (Boethus) BEN ZONIN (beginning of second
century), respected and wealthy resident of Lydda, whose
home was a meeting place for scholars. It is related that the
rabbis, headed by Rabban *Gamaliel of Jabneh, “reclined in
the home of Baitos b. Zonin in Lydda and discussed Passover
halakhot the whole of that night [of the *Passover Seder] until
cockcrow” (Tosef., Pes. 10:12). He also discussed halakhic
problems with the rabbis (TJ, Pes. 2:end of 4, 29c; Pes. 37a).
Baitos conducted his life in accordance with the teachings of
the rabbis, particularly *Eleazar b. Azariah (Meg. 27b; BM 63a;
BB 13b), and his conduct is cited in tannaitic sources as evidence
for the halakhah in both ritual and monetary matters
(BM 5:3; Av. Zar. 5:2).
Bibliography: Hyman, Toledot, 270.
[Zvi Kaplan]
BAIZERMAN, SAUL (1899–1957), U.S. sculptor. Baizerman
was born in Vitebsk, the same Russian town in which Marc
*Chagall was raised. At 13 he decided to become a sculptor. He
received some artistic training in Russia; the first of his teachers
there told him he was not talented enough to succeed as
an artist. After escaping from an Odessa prison where he had
been incarcerated for a year and a half for revolutionary activities,
Baizerman arrived in America in 1910 at the age of 22. In
1911 he began classes at the National Academy of Design, and
then continued his artistic training at the Beaux-Arts Institute
of Design in New York for four years. He also studied at
the Educational Alliance, where he became acquainted with
Moses *Soyer and Chaim *Gross.
In the early 1920s Baizerman began a series of carved
plaster figures, later cast in bronze, to inhabit a model of New
York City. Until his death he worked on this project, titled The
City and the People. Approximately 56 pieces show urban life
on a small scale; some of the figures are only three inches high.
The actual city is a nearly abstract, geometric form in which
the laborers of the metropolis might toil. Even so, Baizerman
exhibited the small sculptures as independent entities rather
than creating a narrative for figures such as Man with Shovel
(1921–23) and Rabbi (1922).
While The City and the People is Baizerman’s most ambitious
project, he is better known for the sculptural technique
he adopted in 1926. He hammered copper sheets into representational
forms, a physically exhausting procedure that
displays the artist’s labor as much as the subject represented.
This approach had its roots in Baizerman’s Russian childhood;
his father, a harness maker, hammered leather into harnesses.
Being concave as well as convex, Baizerman’s sculptures are
meant to be seen in the round. Although the sculptures appear
solid and heavy, the hammered metal is thin. A January
1931 fire in his New York studio destroyed much of his
sculpture, but with renewed energy he created a new body of
work that was shown in exhibitions in the 1930s and 1940s,
including one-man shows in 1933, 1938, and 1948. His work
occasionally took on biblical themes, such as Eve (1949), Crucifixion
(c. 1947–50), and Creation (1950–57), which stands
eight feet high. He also did a portrait head of Albert Einstein
(1940–49).
Bibliography: S. Baizerman, Saul Baizerman’s Lifetime Project
(1998); M. Dabakis and D. Finn, Vision of Harmony: The Sculpture
of Saul Baizerman (1989)
[Samantha Baskind (2nd ed.)]
BAJA, the seat of Bács (earlier Bács-Bodrog) county situated
on the Danube in southern Hungary. Jews settled there in 1725.
In 1753 there were ten and in 1773 16 families, mainly merchants
in wool, leather, and tobacco. In 1773 the Jews, mostly
immigrants from Moravia, received permission to build a
synagogue and appoint a rabbi. In March 1840 the communal
buildings, including the synagogue, were devastated in a
fire that swept through the town. A new synagogue was built
in 1842. The community opened a secondary school in 1878,
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 69
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