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, a rabbi, was born in Africa, in a village near Fez, in 1013. When in his seventy-fifth year, he was involved in a quarrel, which obliged him to go to Spain, where he resided at Cordova. He contributed very much to the reputation of the academy of that place by his learning and works. He died at Lucena in 1103, at the age of ninety. His principal work is an abridgment of the Talmud, so highly esteemed by the Jews, that they study it more than the original, and call it the little Talmud. It has gone through many editions, some with the text only, but mostly with notes. The first and most rare edition is that of Constantinople, 1509; but the most complete, perhaps, is that published by Sabioneta, Venice, 1552.

, a rabbi of the sixteenth century, by birth a German, passed the greater part of his life at Rome and at Venice, where he taught the Hebrew tongue to many of the learned of these two cities, and even to some cardinals. Of all the critics that have arisen among the modern Jews, he has the reputation of being the most enlightened, and had the candour to reject as ridiculous fables, the greater part of their traditions. To him the learned are obliged for, 1. “Lexicon Chaldaicum,” Isnae, 1541, fol. 2. “Traditio DoctrinsB,” in Hebrew, Venice, 1538, 4to, with the version of Munster; Bale, 1539, 8vo. 3. “Collectio locorum in quibus Chaldseus paraphrastes interjecit nomen Messiae Christi; Lat. versa a Genebrardo,' Paris, 1572, 8vo. 4. Several Hebrew Grammars, 8 vo, necessary for such as would penetrate into the difficulties of that language. 5.” Nomenclatura Hebra'ica,“Isnae, 1542, 4to. The same in Hebrew and Latin, by Drusius; Franeker, 1681, 8vo. He rejected, among other ancient prejudices, the very high origin of the Hebrew points, which have been carried as far back as the time of Ezra, and referred them with more probability to the sixth century. Father Simon says of him,” Solus Elias Levita inter Judaeos desiit nugari;" and adds, that he was so much hated by the other Jews for teaching the Christians the Hebrew tongue, as to be obliged to prove formally that a Jew might do this with a good conscience.

, was a rabbi of the sixteenth century, who rendered himself famous by the collection of the Masora, which was printed at Venice in 1525 with the text of the Bible, the Chaldee paraphrase, and the commentaries of some rabbies upon Scripture. This edition of the Hebrew Bible, and those which follow it with the great and small Masora compiled by this rabbi, are much esteemed by the Jews; there being nothing before exact or accurate upon the Masora, which is properly a critique upon the books of the Bible, in order to settle the true reading. In the preface to his great Masora he shews the usefulness of his work, and explains the keri and ketib, or the different readings of the Hebrew text: he puts the various readings in the margin, because there are just doubts concerning the true reading; he observes also, that the Talmudish Jews do not always agree with the authors of the Masora. Besides the various readings collected by the Masorets, and put by this rabbi in the margin of his Bible, he collected others himself from the ms copies, which must be carefully distinguished from the Masora.

, or Jehuda, Hakkadosh, or the Saint, a rabbi celebrated for his learning and riches, according to the Jewish historians, lived in the time of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, whom he made a proselyte to Judaism, and it was by his order that Jehuda compiled the Mishna, the history of which is briefly this: The sect of the Pharisees, after the destruction of Jerusalem, prevailing over the rest, the study of traditions became the chief object of attention in all the Jewish schools. The number of these traditions had, in a long course of time, so greatly increased, that the doctors, whose principal employment it was to illustrate them by new explanations, and to confirm their authority, found it necessary to assist their recollection by committing them, under distinct heads, to writing. At the same time, their disciples took minutes of the explanations of their preceptors, many of which were preserved, and grew up into voluminous commentaries. The confusion which arose from these causes was now become so troublesome, that, notwithstanding what Hillel had before done in arranging the traditions, Jehuda found it necessary to attempt a new digest of the oral law, and of the commentaries of their most famous doctors. This arduous undertaking is said to have employed him forty years. It was completed, according to the unanimous testimony of the Jews, which in this case there is no sufficient reason to dispute, about the close of the second century. This Mishna, or first Talmud, comprehends all the laws, institutions, and rules of life, which, beside the ancient Hebrew scriptures, the Jews supposed themselves bound to observe. Notwithstanding the obscurities, inconsistencies, and absurdities with which this collection abounds, it soon obtained credit among the Jews as a sacred book. But as the Mishna did not completely provide for many cases which arose in the practice of ecclesiastical law, and many of its prescriptions and decisions were found to require further comments and illustrations, the task of supplying these defects was undertaken by the rabbis Chiiam and Oschaiam, and others, disciples of Jehudah; who not only wrote explanations of the Mishna, but made material additions to that voluminous compilation. These commentaries and additions were collected by the rabbi Jochanan ben Eliezer, probably in the fifth century, under the name of the “Gemara,” because it completed the Mishna. This collection was afterwards called the Jerusalem Gemara, to distinguish it from another of the same kind made in Babylon, at the beginning of the sixth century.

, a rabbi, was one of those Jews who left Spain on an edict of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492, which obliged the Jews to quit their dominions within four months, or else embrace Christianity. Karo went first to Portugal; and, travelling thence to Jerusalem, he lost his children and his books on the road. He lived in great solitude and, to console himself, composed a book, entitled “Toledot Jiskach, the Generations of Isaac.” It is a commentary upon the Pentateuch, partly literal and partly cabbalistical, in which he examines the sentiments of other commentators. It has gone through several editions: the first was printed at Constantinople in 1518; afterwards at Mantua, and Amsterdam in 1708. Buxtorf ascribes to our rabbi a ritual entitled “Eben Haheser, the Rock of Support.”

, a Jewish philosophical writer, was born at Dessau, in Anhalt, in 1729. After being educated under his father, who was a schoolmaster, he devoted every hour he could spare to literature, and obtained as a scholar a distinguished reputation; but his father ber ing unable to maintain him, he was obliged, in search of labour, or bread, to go on foot, at the age of fourteen, to Berlin, where he lived for some years in indigence, and frequently in want of necessaries. At length he got employment from a rabbi as a transcriber of Mss, who, at the same time that he afforded him the means of subsistence, liberally initiated him into the mysteries of the theology, the jurisprudence, and scholastic philosophy of the Jews. The study of philosophy and general literature became from this time his favourite pursuit, but the fervours of application to learning were by degrees alleviated and animated by the consolations of literary friendship. He formed a strict intimacy with Israel Moses, a Polish Jew, who, without any advantages of education, had become an able, though self-taught, mathematician and naturalist. Hg very readily undertook the office of instructor of Mendelsohn, in subjects of which he was before ignorant; and taught him the Elements of Euclid from his own Hebrew version. The intercourse between these young men was not of long duration, owing to the calumnies propagated against Israel Moses, which occasioned his expulsion from the communion of the orthodox; in consequence of this he became the victim of a gloomy melancholy and despondence, which terminated in a premature death. His loss, which was a grievous affliction to Mendelsohn, was in some measure supplied by Dr. Kisch, a Jewish physician, by whose assistance he was enabled to attain a competent knowledge of the Latin language. In 1748 he became acquainted with another literary Jew, viz. Dr. Solomon Gumperts, by whose encouragement and assistance he attained a general knowledge of the living and modern languages, and particularly the English, by which he was enabled to read the great work of our immortal Locke in his own idiom, which he had before studied through the medium of the Latin language. About the same period he enrolled the celebrated Lessing among his friends, to whom he was likewise indebted for assistance in his literary pursuits. The scholar amply repaid the efforts of his intructor, and soon became his rival and his associate, and after his death the defender of his reputation against Jacobi, a German writer, who had accused Lessing of atheism. Mendelsohn died Jan. 4, 1785, at the age of fifty-seven, highly respected and beloved by a numerous acquaintance, and by persons of very different opinions. When his remains were consigned to the grave, he received those honours from his nation which are commonly paid to their chief rabbies. As an author, the first piece was published in 1755, entitled “Jerusalem,” in which he maintains that the Jews have a revealed law, but not a revealed religion, but that the religion of the Jewish nation is that of nature. His work entitled “Phaedon, a dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul,” in the manner of Plato, gained him much honour: in this hepresents the reader with all the arguments of modern philosophy, stated with great force and perspicuity, and recommended by the charms of elegant writing. From the reputation which he obtained by this masterly performance, he was entitled by various periodical writers the “Jewish Socrates.” It was translated into French in 1773, and into the English, by Charles Cullen, esq. in 1789. Among his other works, which are all creditable to his talents, he wrote “Philosophical Pieces;” “A Commentary on Part of the Old Testament;” “Letters on the Sensation of the Beautiful.”