JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

all three participated in a Jefferson Airplane reunion, which
yielded a new studio album and tour. In 1991, Balin issued Better
Generation and two years later joined Kantner’s Jefferson
Starship – The Next Generation project, concurrently continuing
his solo career with his 1997 album Freedom Flight. Balin’s
1999 album Marty Balin’s Greatest Hits was a compilation of
re-recordings of past favorites.
With nine platinum and three gold records to his credit,
Balin was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and
“Miracles” was inducted into BMI’s Millionaires Club, having
been played more than 2.7 million times.
Besides being a recording artist, Balin is a painter as
well. His artwork depicts many of the musicians with whom
he shared the stage, such as Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Elton
John, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, Kiss, Bob Marley, and
Grace Slick, as well his idols Otis Redding, Robert Johnson,
and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1999 his exhibit “World of Rock & Roll
Legends” toured art galleries in the U.S.
[Jonathan Licht / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
BALINT, MICHAEL (1896–1970), psychoanalyst. Born Mihaly
Maurice Bergmann in Budapest, the son of a physician,
he changed his name to Michael Balint against his father’s
wishes. He also changed religion, from Judaism to Unitarian
Christianity. In the 1930s Balint settled in Manchester, England,
moving to London in 1945.
Balint devoted a lifetime of research and practice to the
development of psychoanalysis as a science. Entering the field
while it was still young and taking on form, Balint spent much
time studying psychoanalytic technique as well as the patient’s
response to various forms of therapy. This work is discussed
in his books The Doctor, His Patient, and the Illness (1957) and
Psychotherapeutic Techniques in Medicine (1961). Balint also
devoted much research to understanding the mechanisms of
human sexuality, concentrating in large part on sexual perversions
and their relation to neurotic and psychotic symptoms.
In addition to writing Problems of Human Pleasure and
Behavior (1957), he edited many anthologies on the subject of
sexuality. In 1968 he was elected president of the British Psychoanalytical
Society.
The Balint Society was founded in 1969 to continue the
work begun by Balint in the 1950s. The aim of the society is
to help general practitioners attain a better understanding of
the emotional content of the doctor-patient relationship. The
Balint method consists of regular case discussion in small
groups under the guidance of a qualified group leader. Their
objective is to reveal feelings unwittingly harbored by the doctor
towards his or her patient, usually engendered by purely
subjective factors, which interfere with the doctor’s approach
to a patient, thus jeopardizing not only the patient but also
blurring or blinding the doctor’s mind with regard to proper
diagnostic procedures and further treatment. Balint societies
have been formed in a number of countries. In 1972 the first
international Balint conference was held in London.
[Maurice Goldsmith / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
ballagi, mór
BALKH, town in northern Afghanistan (within medieval
Khurasan). Balkh was formerly the stronghold of Jewish settlements
in Afghanistan. According to Persian and Muslim traditions,
it was founded after the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.E.), who is said to have settled the
exiled Jews there. It was to Balkh, according to Muslim tradition,
that the prophet Jeremiah fled, and where the prophet
Ezekiel was buried. According to the Muslim historian al-
Ṭabarī, another Jewish prophet with the unidentifiable name
of SMY conducted religious disputations with Zoroaster in
Balkh. Reference by Arab geographers to a Bāb al-Yahūd (Gate
of Jews) in Balkh, and to “al-Yahūdiyya” (“Jewish territory” or
“Jewish town”) provide additional evidence that a large Jewish
settlement existed there. The name al-Yahūdiyya or al-
Yahūdān-al Kubrā (the Great Jewry) was, however, later euphemistically
changed to al-Maymana (the ‘auspicious’ town)
since the term “al-Yahūdiyya” was rejected by the Muslims. It
was at Balkh that the sectarian *Hiwi al-Balkhī was born in
the ninth century. The Jews of Balkh were forced to maintain
a public garden. Maḥmūd of Ghazna (1034) imposed special
taxes on the Jews of the town, stipulating, however, that
not more than 500 dirham should be accepted from them.
The Jewish community continued well into the 13th century,
when a Jewish merchant from Balkh named Khawāja Rashīd
al-Dīn al-Ḥakīm went from Khurasan to India. However, the
community was evidently destroyed during the Mongol invasions.
Bibliography: Frye, in: EIS2, 1 (1960), 1000–02 (includes
bibliography).
[Walter Joseph Fischel]
BALLAGI (formerly Bloch), MÓR (1815–1891), linguist and
theologian. Born in Inocz, Hungary, he attended yeshivot
and studied mathematics at Pest, continuing in Paris and
Tuebingen. In 1843 he became a Protestant. During the Hungarian
revolution in 1848, Ballagi served as secretary to
General Görgey. He taught Hebrew, Greek, and biblical exegesis
at the theological academy of the Reformed Church at
Kecskemét from 1851, and in Pest from 1855 to 1877. While still
a Jew Ballagi published a monograph, A zsidókról (1840), advocating
the emancipation of Hungarian Jewry and the establishment
of a rabbinical college. He translated into Hungarian
the Hebrew prayer book (1841), the Pentateuch (1840–41), and
the Book of Joshua (1842), and wrote a primer of the Hebrew
language, A héber nyelv elemi tankönyve (1856; 2nd edition
revised by Ignaz Goldziher in 1872), Renaniana (Hg., 1864),
and biblical studies (Bibliai tanulmányok, 2 vols., 1865). Ballagi
also compiled a dictionary of the Hungarian language,
and published a Hungarian-German, German-Hungarian
dictionary.
Bibliography: S. Imre, Emlékbeszéd Ballagi Mór rendes
tagról (1893); S. Csekey, Budapesti Református Theológiai Akadémia
története (1955); Scheiber, in: Református Egyház, 7 (1955), 520.
[Alexander Scheiber]
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 91