Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Ciechanover, Aaron, 1947–, Israeli biochemist, M.D. Hebrew Univ.–Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, 1974; D.Sc. Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Haifa, 1982. He has been on the faculty ...

(Encyclopedia) Jacobs, Joseph, 1854–1916, Jewish writer, historian, and folklorist, b. Australia. He lived in England until 1900, when he went to the United States to edit a revision of The Jewish Encyclopedia. He...

(Encyclopedia) Hershko, Avram, 1937–, Israeli biochemist, M.D. Hebrew Univ.–Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, 1965, Ph.D. 1969. Hershko has been a professor at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion...

(Encyclopedia) Ben-Zvi, Yizhak yĭtshˈhäk bĕn-tsvē [key], 1884–1963, president of Israel (1952–63), b. Russia, originally named Issac Shimshelevitz. A Zionist, he fled Russia in 1905 because of his activitie...

(Encyclopedia) purification, in religion, the ceremonial removal of what the religion deems unclean. The usual agents of purification are water (as in baptism), bodily alteration (as in circumcision), and fire. The ...

(Encyclopedia) Pococke, Edward pōˈkŏk [key], 1604–91, English Orientalist, b. Oxford. Ordained a priest in 1629, he resided at Aleppo in Syria as a chaplain, where he collected valuable manuscripts and studied ...

(Encyclopedia) Septuagint sĕpˈtyo͞oəjĭnt [key] [Lat.,=70], oldest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made by Hellenistic Jews, possibly from Alexandria, c.250 b.c. Legend, according to the fictional l...

(Encyclopedia) Al-Fasi, Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen äl-fäˈsē [key], 1013–1103, prominent Jewish Talmudic scholar of the very late Gaonic period, b. near Fès, N Africa. He headed the rabbinical school at Fès unt...

(Encyclopedia) Whorf, Benjamin Lee hwôrf [key], 1897–1941, American linguist and anthropologist, b. Winthrop, Mass. Although he was trained in chemical engineering and worked for an insurance company, Whorf made ...

(Encyclopedia) Shakhmatov, Aleksey Aleksandrovich əlĭksyāˈ əlĭksänˈdrəvĭch shôkmətôfˈ [key], 1864–1920, Russian philologist and historian. Shakhmatov's many books on the history of the Russian langua...