"
Alexander in. Alexandrovich Alexander Balas ,
all
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Mi'ctings wen: held by
Europi'.
tlu' oiti/.cns
of
New York and
London. Fcliruiiry 1. 18S2, cxi)ifs.sing with the |HTsi(ulcd .lew.*; in the Ktisslan
348
slirlien Kaisern. Ilerlln, IdSIS; .rthiir Kl('ln.si'hmldt, />rri Jahrhunilertf Russixcher Ucsch. Ilerlln. IttSlK; sonic valuable stalbtlos in .K. While. MixleniJtw. London, lim.
synip:itliy I'mpirc, iiud pnilislinsr, "in tin- nimu' of civilization,
against the spirit of medieval perseculion. thus The only response to these revived in Russia." friendly appeals was the issue of the "Temporary Ijiws " of .^lay 1."). 1882. These laws made the condltioD of the Russian .lews almost unbearable. They established a pal<> within lh<'"l*ale," positively pnihihiling the Jews of the The tifteen western irovernmenls from liv Laws." ing outside of towns aiul cities. an<l canceling all mortgages and leases held by Jews on Hundreds of thousands of Russian landed estates. Jews removed to the I'nited States of America, where they found a new home. Some went to Palestine and founde<l agricultund colonies. On Jime 12, 18M2, Ignatiev retired from otiice. Hois said to have been dismissed because convincing proof was furnished to the czar that he was using the pc'rsecution of the Jews to extort blackmail, and that he had taken ad vantage of his position to exempt his own estates from the disastrous elTeets of the May Laws, while those of the imperial family sulTered (Harold Fred eric, "The New Exodus," pp. r^.'i-lSO). According tootlicial statements, hfiwcver, he was discharged because of a resohition of the scnali' that he "had not taken the necessary steps to prevent the riots ("Voskhod." January. 1!^88. p. .>:!). He was succeeded by Count I). .. Tolstoi, who issued a circular. June 21. urging the governors to do theirduty in jireserving order and putting a stop to the riots. The circtilar had a good elfect, yet some outbreaks occurred as late as the middle of August. 1882. Incendiary fires now ravaged the country and destroyeil the property of over thirty thousand Jewish families in various towns and villages of the northwestern prov-
"May
This lire crusade was continued with more or inces. less intensity until the end of Alexander's n'ign.
The May Laws were supjdemented and partly en forced by the regulations of Jan. 7. bSS."). and then followed a whole series of orders restricting the num ber of Jewish students in high schools and univer sities. and curtailing the rights of Jewish university graduates. Many other rigorous measures directed against the Jews betokened an entire reversal of the liberal policy inaugurated in the sixties. In 1890, Mr. Gladstone wri>te to the "Jewish Chroni cle " that he had "read with pain and horror the various statements res]>ecting the suffen'ngs of the Jews in Russia, and that the thing to do. if the facts coulil be established, was to rouse the conscience of Russia and Europe in reiranl to tlu'm " .t a me<'t ing at the Guildhall. Lomloii. Dcivmber 10. l.Hilii, it was resolved; "That a suitable memorial be pre Senled to the Emperor of all the Kussias, respectfully pniying his Majesty to repeal all the exceptional and
restrictive
laws and
disabilities
which
attlicted
Jewish subjects, and begging his ^lajesty to confer upon them e(|ual rights with those enjoyed by the rest of his Majesty's subjects." This memo rial was not even read by the czar, and was returned unopened to the lord mayor of London. BiBLioGRAPnv: Charles Jjow. Alrramhr III. nf BtiMtin. his
pp.
2rti-2ir>,
lit. er,',
Mysh.
Uindiin. 1S!W; C.
.S.
CuntiiTtKiimal Rcainl. Ism,
IKS; Ituxskiitia .Vw.v(. .lane, ISSl, pp. U6-MH, KK); ,1, A. K»AvMv>(/.*<trN k Itus^^kun Znkituam <i yix^ri:tiakh,
St. rcterslniDJ, 1H9S; Joseph .larutis. I'frsfcutionof the Jews in Ritsttia. issued bythe Huss()-Jevi.sh Comiiilttee of London. Philadelphia, 1S91 Dnniidov San-Dnnato, I'c rrcw/fi VnftniH V HnsxiuHt. Pelcrsliurtr. 18Si; Si.-<trmatirhe»ki Vkazalfl Literal urti n Yevmiakh na littsskoin Yttziikiif s, Vos flu I'isfi. St. Petersburc. IslKi H. von Samson Himinelstiema, Russia under Atcjamtrr III. translated from the German liv J. Morrison. New York, isai S. Syrhevski, I'mlivn-Trvreiskijia Bcziihrazijia. Odessa, 1)«1 Flerovsky, Vnter Orel Ru.^:
U
II.
ALEXANDER:
An Knglish
family of printers and lianslalors thai lloui-ished duringthe latter part of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth. The foii'nderof the linn was probat)ly
A. Alexander (ben Judah Loeb), whose have been the
lication .se<ins to
I
pub-
lirst
laggadah
(1770).
He
printed iirayers for the fast -days (Sephardic rite), 177(1, and (for the (Jerinan rile) in 1787; the I'entatcuch, 17S,"); and ilaily prayers with English translation (Spanish rite). 17.S.S, logclher with a special work on the llosannas, in l.'<ll7. In 1817 he brought out a prayer book on the Hamiltonian or inlerlinearv system, called " .Vlexaniler's Interpretin
ing Tetillot."' His son and successor. edition of the Bible in
Levy, published a complete Hebicw and English in 1824.
The li-anslalions were very slovenly jiieces of work, displaying ignorance alike of Englisli and Hebrew. Levj' seems to have been of a .somewhat (|Uarrelsonie disposition. A pamphlet of his. "The Axe Laid to the Root" (1808), dealt in somewhat indecorous terms Avith the conduct of Chief Rabbi Ilerschell; while his ".Meinoii-s of Ihi- Lif<' and Commercial Connections of the Ijale H. (ioldsmid of Roehampton," of the same year, is little less than the '•lirmiique .irdtHliilnisf
London community nf the
of the
time. hisaliuse of the chief rabbi on the fly-leaves of the separate fascicles of his translation of the Bible, which are now very rare.
Levy continued
Steinsrhnelder. Cat. RoilL col. ~K); Jacobs and Anulii-Jnil. Nos. 757, K21, I.'.IS, 1,-)19, l.Wl, l.'i2>. ISiiH.'KR', l.«l; rranmrtions nf the
Bini.iofiR.vriiY
Wolf,
Ril,l.
l.T^i-l.^iSH,
l.i:iO-l.VB,
Jewish Hislurieal Sociclu
(if
EnyUtnil.
lii. .t«,
B8.
ALEXANDER: .
amoia. See Ai.ex..ni)Hi
ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS Greek
(Al.l:XA.M)I!.l.
commentator on
.Vrisl(ii|{>;
llnurisliid at Ihe
end of
the second centui'v and at the beginning of the third, in the reign of the emperors Septimus Severus and He was surnamed "the Exegele"and Caracalla. " -Vphrodisiensis the latter designation being derived from his bii'thplace, A]ihrodisias in Caria. His authoi'ity was e(|U:illy high among the Arabians and the Greeks; and Maimonides. in a letter to Ibn Tibbon, the Hebrew translator of his "Guide to the P<rplexed," especially recommends to him the study of the commentaries of Alexander (" Letters and Responsa of Maimonides," ed. Leipsic, p 27). Besides the commentaries, which for the most part have been translah'il inio Aiabic, Syiiac. and Hebrew the latter veision has been His Idea of service in the reconstruction of the of Intellect. Greek text Alexander paraphrased Aristotle's book on "The Soul In this work. Alexander evolves a new theory of intellect, which theoi-y was the subject of much controversy belween the Mohammedan and Jewish philosophers. According to .Vlexan<ler, intellect (lot'f) in its primilive stale is nothing but an aptitude associated with the other faculties of the soul, the formative principU- of the organism. This primilive intellect, which has only a potential existence, is called lotif iP/Kof (the material intellect), because, like matter, it is capable by development of transformalion and of assuming a distinctive form. In fact, this facvdty pas.ses from a potentiality into an actuality, and commences to have an effective existence when, by study and r<liection, it acquires ideas, with which it identities itself; for the act of "
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