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Bialik, Ḥayim Naḥman
(1873–1934), foremost modern Hebrew poet. Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik was born in the village of Radi, near the city of Zhitomir in Ukraine. After his father’s timber business failed, the family moved to Zhitomir when Bialik was…
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Biała
Town in southern Poland, from 1945 in the province of Silesia. The development of Biała was closely tied to that of neighboring Bielsko (situated in what was the Austrian part of Silesia), and was mainly related to texti…
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Białystok
Industrial city in northeastern Poland, Białystok (Rus., Belostok) sits nestled in a heavily wooded area that divides central Poland from Belarus and Lithuania. The town, originally founded in 1320, remained part of the …
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Bick, Ya‘akov Shemu’el
(1772–1831), Hebrew writer, satirist, translator, and merchant. Ya‘akov Shemu’el Bick was one of the most prominent figures in the first generation of Galician maskilim but was eventually drawn to Hasidism. He was born i…
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Biegeleisen, Henryk
(1855–1934), literary historian, ethnographer, critic, publisher, journalist, and educator. Henryk Biegeleisen was born in Touste (in the Skłatat region in eastern Galicia; a town with a population of 2,139 in 1880, of w…
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Bielsko
Section of the urban area of Bielsko-Biała, Silesia, in southern Poland. Bielsko (Ger., Bielitz) was a Bohemian town until about 990, then Polish until 1327, when it was once more under Bohemian rule. Beginning in 1526 i…
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Bihari, Sándor
(1856–1906), painter. Sándor Bihari (known as Alexander in the West) was one of the leading artists of late nineteenth-century Hungary, and a major representative of that country’s realist school of the 1880s. Although B…
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Bikhowsky, Elisheva
(1888–1949), poet and novelist. Elisheva Bikhowsky was born Elisabeta Zhirkova to a Christian family in Riazan, Russia. Her father, Ivan Zhirkov, taught at a rural elementary school and published schoolbooks and texts fo…
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Bikl, Shloyme
(1896–1969), Yiddish writer, critic, and journalist. Born in the shtetl of Ustechko, in Austrian eastern Galicia (now Ukraine), Shloyme Bikl (alternately, Bickel), received a traditional Jewish education and then attende…
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Bin
Jewish youth movement that functioned between 1927 and 1937, mainly in the Vilna district and the city of Vilna. Bin (Bee), whose name derives from the original intention of shaping the movement as a structured hierarchi…
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Bin, Di
Illustrated humorous weekly published in Warsaw from March through August 1906. Di bin (The Bee) represented the first attempt by Shmuel Yankev Yatskan (1874–1936) to publish a popular Yiddish newspaper, two months befor…
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Birnbaum, Nathan
(1864–1937), author and publicist. Born in Vienna to moderately Orthodox parents, Nathan Birnbaum (who adopted the pseudonym Mathias Acher) grew estranged from observant Judaism in secondary school, but unlike his peers …
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Birnboym, Avrom Ber
(1865–1922), cantor, composer, and pedagogue. Avrom Ber Birnboym was born in the city of Pułtusk, north of Warsaw. He reportedly learned music from his Hasidic father, and also studied violin in Łódź with Ḥayim Janowski,…
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Birobidzhan
Territory in the far eastern reaches of the Soviet Union, designated in 1928 as the Jewish homeland and as a Yidishe Avtonomne Gegnt (Jewish autonomous region) in 1934. Yiddish was the territory’s official language.
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Birobidzhaner Shtern
Yiddish-language social and political newspaper established in 30 October 1930 in the future city of Birobidzhan. When Birobidzhan was formally declared a Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) in 1934, the approximate circulati…
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Birth and Birthing
The birth of a child in the premodern period was accompanied by many fears, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness. There were many possible dangers for both the mother and the baby. In traditional Jewish life, these dang…
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Bischitz, Johanna
(Née Hani Fischer; 1827–1898), philanthropic activist and head of a women’s association. Johanna Bischitz’s father was Moritz (Mór) Fischer (1799–1880), director and owner of the world-famous porcelain factory of Herend …
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Black Book
Account of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the Soviet Union. The first plenary session of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) in May 1942 set up a subcommittee to collect material on Nazi crimes against the Jewish po…
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Blank, Maurice
(1848–1929), banker. Maurice Blank was born in Piteşti, Romania, into the family of a Jewish tradesman and entrepreneur, Mauriciu Blanco. Blank studied economics in Vienna and Leipzig, and upon his return to Romania beca…
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Blau, Lajos
(1861–1936), Talmudic scholar, historian, and rector of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. Born in Putnok, Hungary, Lajos (Ludwig) Blau studied at the Pressburg yeshiva and attended the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest.…
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