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642 Behalah.

the age of thirty, and boys before twenty-five. Many of the Jews then hastened the marriages of their children, even of the youngest. Then, naturally, soon arose the question of the legality of such marriages, and a discussion of it is found in a re-

sponsurn by Raphael Cohen of Hamburg (then at Pinsk), dated 1765. The second Behalah occurred in Poland between 1780 and 1793. It is mentioned in a responsum in Ezekiel Landau's "Noda' bi-Yehudah," part "Eben ha-'Ezer," No. 43, which is preceded by the remark that this question from Poland came before Joseph of Posen " in the time of the great excitement before the issue of the severe law [" gezerah "] about marriages, when a rumor was spread and they were marrying little boys to little girls, and now they re" pent. As Joseph came to Posen in 1780, and Ezekiel Landau died in 1793, this Polish Behalah must have taken place between those dates. The next Behalah occurred in 1833. It was caused by some wild rumors of enlisting Jewish girls in the army, and other absurd reports about terrible gezerot, spread before the promulgation of the regulations concerning the Jews, in the year 1835. Section 17 of these regulations prohibits marriages among Jews before the bridegroom has reached the age of eighteen, and the bride that of sixteen. Bogrov, in his "Zapiski Yevreya," p. 3, gives a vivid account of this Behalah. The latest behalahs took place between 1843 and 1848 at various Russian towns, and were merely precautions taken by some fanatical Jews to save the unmarried children from being forced to attend the schools, then about to be established in various Jewish communities. The last Behalah was rather insignificant, and has been traced to a poor schoolmaster who had a houseful of grown-up daughters for whom he could not provide any dowries, and whom, in the excitement which he helped to cause, he succeeded in marrying to little boys. According to the reports of people still living (1902) who remember that period, the account of the last Behalah. in a novel of Peter Smolenskin, is highly exaggerated. .

.

.

.

.

Bibliography



Responsa <No.

9)

appended

to

Raphael ben

Yekutiel Cohen's Torat Jekutiel, Berlin, 1772 Perles, Gesch. der Juden in Posen, in Mnnatsschrift xiv. 261; Smolenskin, Ha-Toeh Bedarke ha^Hayyim, 3d ed., part 2, p. 169, Vienna, 1880 Levanda, Svornih Zako7iov, p. 362 ; private sources.

,



P.

H. R.

Wl.

JACOB JOSEPH HA-ROFE

BEHAR,



Chief rabbi of Bagdad about 1843, and author of two Hebrew works; viz., "Shir Haxlash," a commentary upon the Song of Solomon, printed at Calcutta, 1843, by Eleazar Mari Aaron Saadia Araki, and "Na'awah Tehillah," a commentary upon the Psalms, Jerusalem, 1845. Bibliography

642

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Behr



BEHAR, NISSIM

Palestinian educator born His father, Rabbi Eliezer Behar, having migrated from Rumania to Palestine, instructed Nissim, when but five years old, in the Talmud. Distress forced the family to leave Jerusalem in 1863 for Constantinople, where Behar was admitted to the Ecole Camondo. Adolf Cremieux, visiting that school, took an interest in the young man, and sent him in 1867 to Paris, where he entered the Ecole Orientale and was prepared for



at Jerusalem, 1848.

a pedagogical career. Having finished his studies, he returned to the East, and with the financial aid of the Alliance Israelite Universelle organized elementary schools at Aleppo in 1869, in Samacoff (Bulgaria) in 1874, at Galata (a suburb of Constantinople) in 1875, and finally in 1882 at the Technical School of Jerusalem, the opening of which brought upon Behar severe persecution from ignorant Jews After twenty-eight years of educaof that city. tional work, fifteen of which were passed as headmaster of the Technical School, Behar was pensioned in 1897. whole generation of young men owe their mental development and success in life to the devotion In 1899 he commenced the of their master, Behar. propaganda in favor of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, traveling in Western Europe and in the United States of America. He is now (1902) a resident of the city of New York, furthering the interests of the Alliance Israelite. Behar is the author of a small biography, in Juda?o-Spanish, of Adolf Cremieux (Constantinople,

A

1879).

F. T. H.

s.

BEHEADING.—Biblical capital punishment,

Data: As a regular

Beheading does not seem

to

have been known to the Israelites before the time of Only cutting off the head of the Greek dominion. a slain or disabled enemy (I Sam. xvii. 51 et seq.) for practised by the a trophy occurs (I Sam. xxxi. 9

Philistines).

Soldiers sent to kill

anybody usually

brought his head as proof of the faithful execution of their mission (see II Kings vi. 31, 32; II Sam. xvi. 9; xx. 21, 22). The Babylonian and Assyrian monuments abound in representations of such troThe Egyptians, however, seem to have emphies. ployed this mutilation very rarely, except in the earliest times (first and second dynasties). Their belief that life has its seat in the head, and that Beheading means, therefore, a destruction of the soul's second existence Beheading thus was reserved for the worst criminals as bringing double and eternal death— may possibly furnish a clue for the importance attached to the head as a trophy, among ancient nations. See Capital Punishment.

—

J.

W. M. M.

JR.

Livret Hazan.

M. Fr.

s.

In Rabbinical Literature According to rabBeheading was one of the accepted modes of execution in the Bible (Mishnah Sanh. vii. Murder and idolatry (when committed by a 1).

binical opinion,

BEHAR, MOSES SHABBETHAI: and author; lived

Rabbi

in Salonica at the beginning of

the nineteenth century.

Author

"Torat Mosheh" (Salonica,

Hebrew book, a collection of

of a

1802),

responsa. s.

whole city, Deut. xiii. 14) were the crimes punishable with Beheading (Mishnah Sanh. ix. 1 Mek. Mishpatim, 4 Sifre, Deut. 94). Punishing a slave so severely that death followed within twenty-four



M. Fr.