MOSSIRI, ḤAYYIM NISSIM RAPHAEL – Turkish rabbinical writer; died about 1800 at Jerusalem, whither he had gone from Salonica. He was the author of "Be'er Mayim Ḥayyim," responsa (2 vols., Salonica, 1764 and 1814).Bibliography: Franco, Histoire des Israélites de...
MOSTAR – Capital of the district of Mostar, in the province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria. It had in 1895 a total population of 14,370, of whom 164 were Jews. The first Jews settled at Mostar in 1850 and founded a community six...
MOSUL – Town of Asiatic Turkey; situated 220 miles northwest of Bagdad, on the right bank of the Tigris; capital of the province of the same name. Jews settled at Mosul, or rather in the ancient Nineveh (a suburb of which probably stood...
MOSZKOWSKI, MORITZ – German pianist and composer; born Aug. 23, 1854, at Breslau, where he received his early musical education. After a further course of musical training at Dresden and at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst at Berlin, he acted for...
MOTAL, ABRAHAM BEN JACOB OF SALONICA – Turkish rabbi of the seventeenth century; born about 1568; died in 1658. He was a pupil of R. Samuel Ḥayyun, author of the responsa collection "Bene Shemuel," and probably of R. Solomon b. Abraham Kohen (MaHaRSHak) also. As the...
MOTAL, BENJAMIN B. ABRAHAM OF CONSTANTINOPLE – Turkish scholar of the first half of the seventeenth century. He is said to have been an exceptional grammarian and to have written certain grammatical works, of which, however, nothing has been preserved. He edited the...
MOTAZILITES; MOTEKALLAMIN – See Arabic Philosophy.
MOTH – See Insects.
MOTHER – Biblical Data: Although the father was considered the head of the family among the Hebrews of old, and the mother therefore occupied an inferior position legally and ritually, yet in the ethical relation involving the reverence...
MOṬOṬ, SAMUEL BEN SA'ADIAS IBN – Spanish commentator and translator; lived in the second half of the fourteenth century in Guadalajara, where he probably was born. The spelling of the name, or , is uncertain. Wolf ("Bibl. Hebr." iii. 1113) is uncertain whether...
MOṬOṬ, SIMEON BEN MOSES BEN SIMEON – Jewish mathematician of the fifteenth century; probably lived in Lombardy. No Jewish author mentions him, nor is anything known of his life. That he lived in the middle of the fifteenth century has been concluded from the fact...
MOTTA, EMANUEL DE LA – Early settler in South Carolina; born in the Spanish West Indies Jan. 5, 1761; died May 15, 1821. His family is said to have fled to the New World to escape Spanish persecution. Emanuel was educated at Charleston, S. C., and...
MOTTA, JACOB DE LA – American physician; son of Emanuel de la Motta; born about 1789; died at Charleston, S. C., Feb. 13, 1845. He studied medicine, and was made a member of the South Carolina Medical Society in 1810. He became surgeon in the United...
MOUNTAIN JEWS – See Caucasus.
MOURNERS OF ZION – See Abele Zion.
MOURNING – Mourning Period. Manifestation of sorrow and grief over the loss, by death or otherwise, of a relative, a friend, an honored leader or prophet, or over a national calamity.—Biblical Data: It is recorded that Abraham mourned for...
MOUSE – An animal enumerated among the unclean "creeping things" in Lev. xi. 29. In I Sam. vi., where the reference is to the mice sent as a plague upon the Philistines to ravage their fields, "'akbar" may denote specifically the...
MOVABLE PROPERTY – See Property.
MSTISLAVL – District town in the government of Moghilef, Russia. A Jewish community existed here in the sixteenth century. There is reason to believe that the community was poor; for the synagogal decorations, consisting of a silver crown...
MU'AṬI – Rabbi in Constantinople in the middle of the seventeenth century. He wrote "Yashir Mosheh" (Leghorn, 1655; Amsterdam, 1735), a commentary on Isaac ben Reuben Albargeloni's "Azharot" (comp. Jew. Encyc. ii. 371b, s.v. Azharot),...
MUDAWWAR, ABU AL-BAYAN IBN AL – Karaite court physician to the last Egyptian Fatimite califs and later to Saladin, who pensioned him when he was sixty-three years old; born 1101; died at Cairo 1184. During the twenty years of his retirement his house was...
MUDAWWAR, ELIAS IBN AL- – Arabic poet and physician; lived at Ronda, probably in the first half of the twelfth century (the year 1184 which Jacobs gives in his "Sources," p. 179, as the date of death, refers to another physician of the same name). He was...
MUGNON, DAVID – Spanish scholar and author; died at Venice in 1629. He wrote a work in Spanish entitled "Tratado de la Oracion y Meditacion y Conocimento Proprio y del Dio" (Venice, 1654), a treatise on prayer and on the knowledge of oneself...
MÜHLFELD, LUCIEN – French novelist and dramatic critic; born at Paris Aug. 4, 1870; died there Dec. 1, 1902. After completing his studies at the Lycée Condorcet he entered the University of Paris, where he took the licentiate degrees in literature...
MÜHLHAUSEN, YOM-ṬOB LIPMANN – See Lipmann-Mühausen, Yom-Ṭob ben Solomon.