PINSKER, LEV (LEV SEMIONOVICH) – Russian physician; born at Tomashev, government of Piotrkow (Piotrikov), Poland, 1821; son of Sim-ḥah Pinsker; died at Odessa Dec. 21, 1891. Pinsker obtained his early education in his father's school, the curriculum of which...
PINSKER, SIMḤAH – Polish Hebrew scholar and archeologist; born at Tarnopol, Galicia, March 17, 1801; died at Odessa Oct. 29, 1864. He received his early Hebrew education in the ḥeder and from his father, Shebaḥ ha-Levi, a noted preacher, who...
PINTO – Family of financiers, rabbis, scholars, soldiers, and communal workers, originally from Portugal. Members of it lived in Syria in the beginning of the sixteenth century; and in 1535 there was at Rome a Diogo Rodrigues Pinto,...
PIOTRKOW – Town in Russian Poland, near Warsaw. For some time Piotrkow was the seat of the Polish diet. At the diet of 1538, held there, it was enacted that no Jew should be permitted to farm the taxes, and that Jews should wear...
PIOVE DI SACCO – Small Italian city in the district of Padua; the first in that territory to admit Jews. A loan-bank was opened there by an association ("consortium") before 1373, and was probably an unimportant institution, as it paid a yearly...
PIPE – Musical instrument akin to the flute. The flute was a favorite instrument of the ancients. The monuments show flutes of various shapes. On the Egyptian monuments are pictured (1) singletubed direct flutes made of reed or wood,...
PIPERNO, SETTIMIO – Italian economist: born at Rome 1834. He is (1905) professor of statistics and political economy in the Technical Institute of Rome, director of the Cesi Technical School, and a member of the board of administration of the...
PIRBRIGHT, HENRY DE WORMS, BAR-ON – English statesman; born in London 1840; died at Guildford, Surrey, Jan. 9, 1903; third son of Solomon Benedict de Worms, a baron of the Austrian empire. He was educated at King's College, London, and became a barrister in 1863....
PIRḤE ẒAFON – See Periodicals.
PIRḲE ABOT – See Abot.
PIRḲE DE-RABBI ELI'EZER – Haggadicmidrashic work on Genesis, part of Exodus, and a few sentences of Numbers; ascribed to R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, and composed in Italy shortly after 833. It is quoted immediately before the end of the twelfth century under...
PIROGOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH – Friendly Attitude Toward the Jews. Russian physician and pedagogue; born 1810; died Nov., 1881. He was professor at the University of Dorpat. As a statesman Pirogov belonged to that renowned circle of men whose cooperation in...
PISA – Town in Tuscany, Italy, at the mouth of the River Arno; formerly a port of the TyrrhenianSea. The settlement of Jews in Pisa dates back to very early times; the first mention of a congregation is met with in the "Itinerary" of...
PISA, DA – Italian family, deriving its name from the city of Pisa. It can be traced back to the fifteenth century.Abraham ben Isaac da Pisa: Talmudist; son of Isaac ben Jehiel; lived in Bologna, where he died in 1554. He was often...
PISGAH – Mountain in Moab, celebrated as one of the stations of the Israelites in their journey through that country (Num. xxi. 20) and as the place of one of Balak's sacrifices (ib. xxiii. 14), but chiefly as the place of Moses' death...
PISGAH, HA- – See Periodicals.
PISTACHIO-NUT – See Nut.
PITHOM – One of the cities which, according to Ex. i. 11, was built for the Pharaoh of the oppression by the forced labor of the Israelites. The other city was Raamses; and the Septuagint adds a third, "On, which is Heliopolis." The...
PITTSBURG – Second largest city in the state of Pennsylvania. With Allegheny, the twin-city on the north side of the Allegheny River, it is the chief city of western Pennsylvania.There are no reliable records of the beginnings of the Jewish...
PIUS IV. (Gian Angelo Medici) – Pope from 1559 to 1565. He was a Milanese of humble origin. and became cardinal under Paul III., through the latter's relations with Gian's brother Giangiacomo, who had made himself master of Sienna. Gian, who enjoyed the pope's...
PIYYUṬ – Hymn added to the older liturgy that developed during the Talmudic era and up to the seventh century. The word is derived from the Greek term for poetry, perhaps more directly from ποιητής. The author of a piyyuṭ is called...
PIZMON – Hymn with a refrain; usually the chief poem in the scheme of seliḥot sung or recited by the cantor and congregation in alternation. Of the many etymological derivations suggested for the word, "psalm" (Greek, Ψαλμός) seems the...
PIZZIGHETTONE, DAVID BEN ELIE-ZER HA-LEVI – Italian Talmudist and physician; flourished in the first half of the sixteenth century. As physician he was active in. Cremona; as editor, in Venice. In the latter city he was employed in the Bomberg printing establishment, and...
PJURKO, ABRAHAM MARCUS – Russian Hebraist and pedagogue; born at Lomza Feb. 15, 1853. After having studied Talmud and rabbinics, he devoted himself to modern Hebrew literature, publishing successively: "Bat Yiftaḥ" (Lyck, 1873), a Biblical poem;...
PLACE-NAMES – The geographical names of Palestine are not so often susceptible of interpretation as the personal names, which frequently form regular sentences referring to divine action (see Names). The majority of place-names, probably,...