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602 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Bavaria

the Talmud Torah, by 70 children. Besides, private teachers give instruction to about 130 children. J.

S.

[The following is a list of the rabbis of Bausk in the nineteenth century 1. Rabbi Mordecai ben Abraham Rabbineb. 2. Rabbi Aaron, 1830-33. 3. Rabbi Jacob, 1833-62 died at Bausk 1862. Author of "Zikre Ya'akob," published in Wilna. 4. Rabbi Mordecai ben Joseph Eliasberg, 186292 a descendant of Mordecai Jaffe, and prominent in the Zionist movement. 5. Rabbi Ezekiel ben HillelLifschitz, 1892-95. He held the office of rabbi at Suwalki and Lublin, and



is

now

(since 1895) rabbi of Plotzk.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac ben Solomon Kook, since 1895. Some of his novelke on the Talmud are published in "Tebunah," a periodical devoted to Talmudic literature, edited by Israel Lipkin. 6.

Among

the other

members

of the Jaffe family in Lazar Rosenthal, the most celebrated cantor (hazan) in Russia in the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century died at Bausk in 1831 and

Bausk, the most prominent were







Jedidiah Jaffe, who was awarded a medal byEmperor Nicholas I. for useful educational work among the Jews of Courland. See Jaffe Family, h. b.]

BAVARIA

Kingdom

southern Germany. The settlement of Jewish merchants in Bavaria dates from the very earliest times. The legend that they dwelt in certain cities as, for instance, Regensburg and Augsburg— before the Christian era, is undoubtedly fictitious; having been invented to prove that their ancestors had not been among those Jews who For, while the old Germanic legislakilled Jesus. tion of the sixth and seventh centuries abounds with regulations concerning the Jews, there is not the slightest trace of such laws in the " Leges Bajuvariorum " of the same period. The oldest known document mentioning Jews is an ordinance in the " Leges Portorise " of the year 906 concerning the toll in Passau. It is not until the eleventh century that they appear in the arena of history. The founder of the present royal house, Earliest References. Duke Otto I. of Wittelsbach, allowed

in

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Jewish settlers, who had advanced him

money

for the erection of the city of Landshut, certain privileges of asylum in recognition of their pub-

must be confessed that there is no Germany where religious hatred has raged so furiously against the Jews as Bavaria, and that nowhere else has exceptional legislation against them been so persistently maintained. In the Bavarian hereditary provinces, where the Jews lived exclusively in cities, they were more frequently exposed to sudden outbreaks of popular fury than in the Franconian bishoprics and free cities while their existence was comparatively undisturbed in the lowlands, where many Jews lived in the domains of free lords and under their semi-

But kingdom

lic spirit.

it

other

in



patriarchal government.

The

Jewish martyrs in Bavaria fell at the but while only a few separate communities particularly those on the Main suffered then, in 1276 Louis the Strict banished all Jews first

time of the Crusades

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residing in the country.

602 This was the

first

banish-

of Bavarian Jews, but it could not have lasted long; for nine years later 180 Jews, accused of a ritual murder in the synagogue, were committed to The outbreak of 1298, which arose from the flames. a charge of insulting the host, and extended over all the district from Franconia to the Austrian frontier, Morchiefly affected the congregations of Bavaria.

ment

well-known author of a halakic compendium, together with his famRepeated ily, was among the 628 victims who Massacres fell in Nuremberg on one day (Aug. Driven from the country and 1298). 1, Expulsion, again by Louis the Bavarian in 1314, the Jews were soon permitted to

decai ben Hillel, the

return, but only to experience further misfortune. In 1338, on a charge of insulting the host, the whole

Jewish population of Deggendorf was massacred, and the agitation spread thence over all Bavaria. The murderers at Deggendorf and Straubing were not only pardoned by the duke, but were honored by an edict of commendation and a memorial church

was erected upon the spot, to which, until recently, pilgrimages were made from all parts of Bavaria. The whole episode was actually dramatized, and a representation of the play was given in Regen as At the same time (1336-38) late as the year 1800. the communities in Franconia and Swabia were attacked by the peasants led by Aemledeb, who claimed to have received a divine call to massacre

Jews.

Ten years later about 10,000 Jews in Bavaria fell victims to the bloody epidemic of superstition which accompanied the Black Death. Salfeld's recently published " Martyrologium des Nurnberger Mcmorbuchs " enumerates nearly eighty Bavarian congregations which suffered almost complete extinction at that time. Numerous churches consecrated to the Virgin are to-day the standing relics of former synagogues, upon the ruins of which they were erected. It was not very long, however, before the dearth of capital in the country made itself felt so severely that Duke Louis, who had not hesitated to pounce upon the possessions of the murdered Jews, felt himself constrained to issue a special proclamation that Jews thenceforth settling in Bavaria would receive particular marks of his favor and protection. In the fifteenth century it would be difficult to indicate any region where the Jews were not treated as outlawed aliens. When, in 1442, The Duke Albrecht, surnamed for this act Era of Ex- " the Pious, " banished them from forty pulsions, towns and villages of Upper Bavaria, they found refuge in Lower Bavaria under Henry of Landshut, who, with his well-known reputation for accepting gifts from all sides, welcomed the Jews and their not inconsiderable contributions indeed, he is said to have boasted of these " chickens that laid golden eggs. " Under his successor, Louis the Wealthy sometimes called "the enemy of kindness and of the Jews " their condition became worse. Louis conceived the idea of their wholesale conversion to Christianity but, after detaining them for four weeks in various prisons, and fining them 32,000 florins, he banished them outright (Oct. 5, 1450). The same fate was meted

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