ACADEMIES IN PALESTINE – According to an oft-quoted tradition of Hoshayah (a collector of Tannaite traditions, who lived in Cæsarea in the first half of the third century), there existed in Jerusalem 480 synagogues, all of which were destroyed with the...
AÇAN, MOSES – Identical perhaps with the Moses ben Joseph Ḥazan, who lived in 1245 at Toledo, and maintained business connections with Alfonso X., the Wise, king of Castile. When Alfonso was in Cuença in 1271, Moses Açan informed him of the...
AÇAN, MOSES DE ZARAGUA – Native of Catalonia, who flourished in the fourteenth century. He wrote a rimed treatise on chess in the Catalonian dialect, which he begins by referring to the creation of the world, and exhorts his fellow man to glorify the...
ACAZ, JACOB – Keeper of the royal lions in Saragossa. In 1384 or 1385, by order of King Pedro of Aragon, Acaz took some lions to Navarre as a present to King Charles II. A certain Abraham Azen is mentioned in 1408 as his successor in...
ACBARA – See Okbara.
ACCAD – Biblical Data: Word occurring once in the Old Testament (Gen. x. 10), as the name of a city; one of the four cities which formed the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod. The exact location is unknown. On the Assyrian and...
ACCENTS IN HEBREW – Symbols denoting vocal stresses on particular syllables in pronouncing words or sentences. 1. In every word we utter, one syllable is spoken with greater emphasis and clearer enunciation than the rest. About it, as the strongly...
ACCENTS, MUSICAL VALUE OF – See Cantillation.
ACCEPTANCE – In law, the assent by one party to an offer made by another, or to any act which becomes operative only by such assent; in commerce, the question whether the assent has been given before the withdrawal of the offer or incomplete...
ACCESSORIES – Definition. In English and American law an accessory is a person who, without committing a criminal act with his own hands, or without even being present, aiding and abetting the criminal, nevertheless shares in the guilt of the...
ACCHO – See Acre.
ACCIDENT – Philosophic Notion. Term used in philosophy to express a characteristic of an object or notion which does not necessarily follow from its nature and is not essential to its concept, but is connected with the object as an...
ACCO, ISAAC – See Isaac ben Samuel of Acre.
ACCOMMODATION OF THE LAW – Passover in Duplicate. An adaptation of laws to circumstances; the mitigation of the rigor of a law in order to reconcile it with the exigencies of life under changing circumstances. Cases of accommodating the law to existing...
ACCUSATORY AND INQUISITORIAL PROCEDURE – Two methods by which persons suspected of crime may be tried. In the Inquisitorial method the judges or other officials seek to draw from the suspected person an acknowledgment of guilt by examining him regarding all the...
ACELDAMA – An ancient ossuary on the southern extremity of Jerusalem, near the ravine of Hinnom. The field once contained rich clay deposits which were worked by potters. A red clay is still dug in its neighborhood. The "potter's house"...
ACHAN – Biblical Data: The son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, who committed sacrilege during the capture of the city of Jericho by the people of Israel in taking a portion of the spoil devoted to the Lord....
ACHAWA – 1. German annual published at Leipsic (C. L. Fritzsche) under the title, "Achawa, Jahrbuch für 1865=5625," from 1865 to 1868 by the Society for the Help of Needy Jewish Teachers, their Widows and Orphans. The annual treated...
ACHBOR – 1. Father of Baal-hanan (comp. Hannibal), king of Edom (Gen. xxxvi. 38, 39, and in the corresponding list of I Chron. i. 49). It has been suggested that the name implies a species of totemism (W. R. Smith, "Kinship and Marriage...
ACHERON – The fiery river of Hades in Greek mythology, mentioned in Plato's "Phædo," 113a, which figures also in Jewish eschatology. In the Sibyllines, i. 301 (also in Enoch, xvii. 6), the souls of the dead traverse Acheron to enter the...
ACHISH – Biblical Data: King of Gath in the time of David and Solomon (I Sam. xxi.-xxix. 1; I Kings, ii.). David, when fleeing from Saul, twice sought asylum with Achish, the first time incognito. He was, however, recognized, whereupon...
ACHMETHA – Name given in the Old Testament (Ezra, vi. 2) to the Persian city called by the Greeks Ecbatana or Agbatana. In Old Persian it is called Hagmatana; in Babylonian, Agamatanu; while in the works of Arabic historians it appears as...
ACHOR – A valley near Jericho. From Josh. xv. 7 it would appear that it was situated upon the northern boundary of Judah. Its exact position has not, however, been ascertained. Eusebius ("Onomasticon," ed. Lagarde, p. 105) and Jerome...
ACHSA – Daughter of Caleb (I Chron. ii. 49), who was promised by her father to the man who should capture Kirjath-sepher. Othniel, the son of Kenaz and nephew of Caleb, took it and married Achsah (Josh. xv. 16, 17). In Judges, i. 12,...
ACHSELRAD, BENEDICT (Bendet ben Joseph ha-Levi) – A darshan, or preacher, of Lemberg in the first half of the seventeenth century. He was the author of several homiletical works, of which the following have been published: "Ben Da'at" (The Son of Knowledge), Hanau, 1616,...