JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

irzai
Bibliography: Rabbi’s Manual (1928–19622), 45–49, CCAR
(Reform); J. Harlow (ed.), Likkutei Tefillah, A Rabbi’s Manual (1965),
Conservative, 51–55.
BIRZAI (Lith. Birži; Yid. יזריב), district capital in northern
Lithuania, near the Latvian border. Jews started to settle
there in the beginning of the 17th century. Birzai was one of
the three leading communities of the “medinah [province] of
Zamut” (Zhmud) in the mid-17th to mid-18th century. A small
Karaite community also existed there. The Jewish population
numbered 1,040 in 1760; 1,685 in 1847; and 2,510 in 1897
(57% of the total). In 1915 the Jews were expelled from Birzai
by the Russian military authorities. After the war some of
the exiles returned. The Jewish community developed during
the period of Lithuanian independence (1918–39). There
were approximately 3,000 Jews living in Birzai in 1934 (36%
of the total). Three of the 12 city councilors were Jewish. Hebrew
and Yiddish schools and a talmud torah were in operation.
Most Jews earned their livelihoods from trade in wood
products and flax; several factories for weaving and spinning
were owned by Jews.
Shortly after the occupation of the town by the Germans
in June 1941, the Lithuanian nationalists began to murder and
maltreat the Jews. A ghetto was established and on August 8,
1941, Lithuanians executed 500 Jewish men. The remaining
Jews were similarly murdered shortly thereafter.
Bibliography: Yahadut Lita, 2 (1967), 292–4. Add. Bibliography:
PK Lita, S.V.
[Yehuda Slutsky / Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]
BIRZULA (from 1935, Kotovsk), town in Ukraine. Until May
1903 it was a village, and under the “Temporary Regulations”
of 1882 (see *May Laws) Jews were prohibited from settling
there. The Jewish inhabitants engaged in trade and crafts.
They were attacked in a pogrom on October 24, 1905. In 1919,
50 Jews were massacred in Birzula by the followers of Simon
*Petlyura. The Jewish population numbered 2,507 in 1926
(25% of the total) and 2,735 in 1939. In the Soviet period they
earned their living as blue-collar workers, artisans, and clerks.
Birzula was occupied by the Germans on August 6, 1941. In the
same month, with the help of the Romanians, they murdered
113 Jews. A ghetto was established, and in November the Jews
were marched toward Dubossary, with 650 murdered on the
way. Hundreds of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were
deported to the area; most were killed or died of starvation or
disease. Only 95 were alive on September 1, 1943.
Bibliography: Judenpogrome in Russland, 1 (1909); E.D.
Rosenthal, Megillat ha-Tevaḥ, 1 (1927); Jewish Colonization Association,
Rapport pour l’année 1925, (1927), 160–243. Add. Bibliography:
PK Ukrainah, S.V.
[Shmuel Spector (2nd ed.)]
BISCHHEIM, French town in the department of the Bas-
Rhin. Jews settled there after their expulsion from *Colmar in
1512. H. *Cerfberr, one of the general syndics of Alsace Jewry
in the second half of the 18th century, lived in Bischheim, as
did his brother-in-law, David *Sinzheim. Cerfberr set up
a foundation on behalf of the community with a capital of
175,000 livres for charitable activities and education. There
were 473 Jews living in Bischheim in 1784. The wooden synagogue,
built in 1781, was replaced by a new one in 1838. It was
sacked during the German occupation in World War II, destroyed
in 1944, and rebuilt in 1959. The Jewish community
in 1968 had 360 members. It has a mikveh which belonged to
David Sinzheim.
Bibliography: M. Ginsburger, Histoire de la communauté
israélite de Bischheim au Saum (1937); E. Scheid, Histoire des Juifs
d’Alsace (1887), 102, 175, 249; R. Berg, La persécution raciale (1947), 181;
Z. Szajkowski, Analytical Franco-Jewish Gazetteer (1966), 45, 249.
[Roger Berg]
°BISCHOFF, ERICH (c. 1867–1936), German biblical and
talmudic scholar. Bischoff repeatedly served as expert on Judaism
in court cases, furnishing memoranda on the *blood
libel, the ethics of the Talmud and the Shulḥan Arukh, etc.
He refused to be termed either anti-or philo-Semitic, but was
criticized by Jewish writers and organizations for his views
(cf. C. Bloch, Blut und Eros im Judentum, 1935). In his Klarheit
in der Ostjudenfrage (1916) he suggested the introduction
of a special Ostjuden tax to be raised by Jewish organizations
either to improve the conditions of unwanted Eastern European
Jews in Germany or to settle them in Palestine. Among
Bischoff’s published works are also Kritische Geschichte der
Thalmud-Uebersetzungen aller Zeiten und Zungen… (1889),
Rabbinische Fabeln ueber Talmud, Schulchan Aruch, Kol Nidre…
(1922), Das Blut im juedischen Schrifttum und Brauch
(1929), and Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch (19424). Bischoff
also edited and translated – from an Oxford manuscript –
the famous anti-Christian tract Toledot Yeshu (Ein juedischdeutsches
Leben Jesu, 1895). Though Bischoff pretended to be
objective in his judgment on Judaism, his work misinterpreted
Jewish sources and was fully exploited by the Nazis.
[Arnold Paucker]
BISCHOFFSHEIM, family of bankers in Belgium, Britain,
and France. The family’s founder RAPHAEL (NATHAN;
1773–1814) was born in Bischoffsheim on the Tauber and settled
as a young man in Mainz, where he became a prominent
merchant and president of the Jewish community. His elder
son, LOUIS (LUDWIG) RAPHAEL (1800–1873) found work at
a banking house in Frankfurt. When he was twenty he moved
to Amsterdam where he established a bank. Through his marriage
to Amalie Goldschmidt, he became related to Europe’s
banking aristocracy. His business expanded rapidly and in
1827 he established a branch in Antwerp, in 1836 together with
the Goldschmidt family a London branch known as Bischoffsheim
and Goldschmidt, and in 1846 another branch in Paris.
In 1848 he moved to Paris, where his bank cooperated with
great French houses in national and international transactions.
At some stages in the development of his banking busi-
724 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3