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359 Awia

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

359

Ayllou

special bravery killing five Arabs at a critical moment of the battle, and receiving wounds of which

Europe as a "meshullah" (messenger) from

he died the following year.

of the



Bibliography: Feraud, Les Interpreter Algeriem; Revue Etudes Juives, xxxiv. 51 Jost, Neuere Gesehichte der

Israeliten,

ii.

212, Berlin, 1846.

J.

s.

'AYIN

sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alIn its phabet. Its numerical value is seventy. earlier form it was a circle, a rude picture of the

The



eye, hence its

name ('"Ayin" = "eye").

This form

to be seen on the Moabite Stone, and also on the old Hebrew inscription found in the Siloam Pool. is still

Its pronunciation in

sound at

modern time ranges from no

as in the Judoeo-German pronunciation, to the nasal ng of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. One reason for this wide range in pronunciation is all,

the Palestinian congregations to collect funds for the poor

Holy Land, leaving his wife and children domiciled in Safed, and having apparently publicly broken with Shabbethaism. Prom Leghorn, where he was in 1688 (Aboab, I.e. 329), he repaired to Amsterdam and thence to London, where, after a few months' stay, he was appointed haham June 6, 1689. The very next year, however, he was vigorously attacked by a member of the congregation, named Ruby Fidanque, who had heard something of Ayllon's antecedents. The Mabamad, caring more for its dignity than for the truth, endeavored to suppress the scandal, but Ayllon's position was so hopelessly undermined by the exposure, that all the really

that there were originally two distinct sounds in Hebrew, as in other Semitic languages, both represented by an Ayin the one a rough breathing (still retained The in Morocco and Syria), the other a soft palatal. distinction between the two, still indicated in the transliteration of proper names in the Greek version of the Old Testament, was gradually lost; in certain districts the Jews retained in their pronunciation traces of the palatal (which accounts for the Sephardic '



pronunciation), in others all traces of the letter disappeared, and the rough breathing became purely vocalic (see Zimmern, " Vergleichende Grammatik der Semitiscben Sprachen," § 7). The letter 'Ayin, along with the Aleph, Waw, and Yod, has been used quite extensively in the Yiddish orthography as a vowel letter, indicating short e. G. B. L. j. jr.

AYLLON (incorrectly also SOLOMON BEN

Aylion, Aelion,

JACOB Haham of Hillion), the Sephardic congregations in London and Amsterdam and follower of Shabbethai Zebi; born in the Orient 1664 (1660?); died in Amsterdam April His name is derived from a town in the 10, 1728. Spanish province Segovia of the name of Aylion. Aylion was neither a general scholar nor a Talmudist of standing, as his responsa (found in Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen's "Keneset Yehezkel," Nos. 3, 5; in Samuel Aboab's "Debar Shemuel," Nos. 320, 324; in Zebi Ashkenazi's "Hakam Zebi," No. 1; in Jacob Sasportas' "Ohel Ya'akob," No. 64) amply show. See also the anonymous letter quoted by Gratz, "Gesehichte," x. 482 (3d ed.). But his history is closely interwoven with that of Shabbethaism in both the East and the West. Aylion 's youth was passed in Salonica, which was probably his birthplace, although some persons assert that Safed was the place, because many Shabbethaians claimed to be of Palestinian birth. He associated with the Shabbethaian circles of Joseph Philosoph, Solomon Florentin, and other leading spirits of antinomian and communistic tendencies. There he is said to have married as his divinely appointed spouse a woman from whom another man had separated without the formality of a divorce, only to experience that she soon left him for a third spouse, whose " affinity " seemed holier to this strange sect than the bonds of lawful matrimony (M. Hagis, "Shebet Posh'im," 34; the passage is, however, few years later he visited somewhat obscure).

A



Solomon ben Jacob Aylion. (From an engraving by

J.

Honbraken.)

members of the congregation would not submit to the new haham, which caused considerable

learned

friction, in spite of a pronunciamento (" haskamah ") issued by the Mahamad that under penalty of excommunication it was forbidden " to any one except the appointed haham to lay down the law or to render any legal decision." Aylion, in a letter to Sasportas (•'Ohel Ya'akob," No. 69) six years later (1696), still complained bitterly of the unbearable relations between him and his congregation, and inasmuch as

his olden Shabbethaian proclivities began to reassert themselves, and the congregation just then began to

consider the propriety of asking for his resignation (M. Hagis, I.e.), he resolved to leave London, and was glad to accept an appointment as associate rabbi of the Sephardic congregation of Amsterdam, 1701. Ayllon's first blunders in his new home took place when in 1700 he pronounced as harmless a heretical work by M. Cardozo (probably the work "Boker Abraham," still extant in manuscript), which he had been requested to examine by the Mahamad. This latter body, however, was somewhat distrustful of its hakam, and sought additional opinions from other learned authorities. They gave as their opinion that