Ambrosius
TUE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Amen
lateinlKClien Lit.. vdI. I.. Lclpslc, !»<!•: Sti'trfrlcd. I'IiHd iv.ii .N'(ii<(i<i .lm/iMwi : II FreudenUial, T>te Flui'iwi jDscphuiihcititl'UtcScliiift: Ufbcr die Htmchaft der Vemwift, pp. 3a-W, Breslau, 1861).
L. G.
AMBKOSnJS, MOSES
One of the
earliest
York, then caUcd New Amstertlam. He was one of a parly of twenlvlhree veil in the New Netherlands in Sept., Jews who Id'A, apparently having left IJiiliia, Brazil, u|)on its recouquest by the Portuguese from the Dutch West As each mcinlicr of the jjarty had India Company. made himself individually lialilc Inr ihc passjige-
Jewish
scttliis in
New
am
money
of
the party,
all
and as the immigrants were
unable to pay this money in full, Ambrosius was one of two who were i)laced under civil arrest by the municipal authorities; but he appears to have been released in a short time, and. witji his associates, to have prospered on American soil under M. J. K. the Dutch Hag.
AMBROSOLI
An
ecclesiastic
of
dignitary
Home. Ihc cvcntsof whose life touched the history of the Jewsof that city in 184S. He distinguished himself through his eloquent sermons on tolerance toward the Jews, and preached in Santa Maria di Trastevere during the agitation for the aboliliiin of the Koman Iliscloiiuence wasso ellective that liisatidienccs were said to have been an.xious to tear down the walls of the Ghetto whenever lie spoke on the His influence, therefore, was quite marked subject. in the movement which culminated in the edict signed by Pius IX. on April 17,1848, to remove the walls and gates of the Homan Ghetto. Berliner relates that he heard from a jiromineut Roman Jew, Samuele Alatri, that on the eventful nighl when the Ghetto walls were torn down and the enthusiastic crowd cheered the torch-lit laborers, the ])ious and learned AmbroUnder his coat he had coiu^ealed soli was present. a cruciti.x, ready to draw it forth at any moment, and in the name of the Christian religion resist any possible interference.
Ghetto.
and Rleger, Gesch. der Jttden in linm. U. 373; BerliaeT. Letzte Tone (>us dcm R6mischen Ohelto, pp. 6 e( seq. Jew. Oirnn., 1849, p. 382. H. G. E.
ISiBLioGRAPnv
VoRplstein
AMELANDER (AMLANDER), MENAHEM MANN BEN SOLOMON HA-LEVI A
Dutch writer of the eighteeutli century. He must have died before 1767, since in the edition of the Pentateuch jtublished in that yearmanvof his annotations are quoted with the addition to his name of the He))rew letters V | (•• of blessed memory "). The same edition shows that he was a recognized authority on Hebrew grammar, for he is therein fre!
ipiently styled
p~ip~iy2r
("the grammarian).
He
was probably a teacher and preacher. The famil_v name Amelander was discovered (by G. Polak) in the epitaph upon the toml)stone of Amelander's daughHe was a puter at the cemetery of Muiderberg. pil of the Amsterdam dayyan and publisher, Moses Fraid<fort, for whose celebrated "Biblia Habbiniea" (Kehillat .Mosheh) Amsterdam, 1724-28, lie under-
—
took the proof-reading of the Bible text. In 172.') he published, together with his brother-in-law Eliezer kudelsheim, a Juda;o-Gennan Bible Commentary with te.xt, under the title "Maggishe Minhah" (they who bring an offering), in folio, a work which enjoyed considerable reputation, and, in view of its period, is not altogether without merit. His edition of " Midrash Tanhuma, " published in 1733, contained marginal notes giving short verbal and technical explanations. The Pentateuch edition mentioned above (with the commentaries " Hinnuk "
480
and "Debek To'j") contains also a few extended annotations by him. In I)e Vidas' " Heshit Hokmah" (The Beginning of AVi.sdom), published in Amsterdam in 177(i, the commentiiry entitled "La-Da'at Hokmah" (To Understand Wisdom), is by AmelanHis Viest known work, however, is the Juda'<iGerman continuation of "Josippon," which lirst apjuared in Amsterdam in 1744. It contains, in addition to many legends, a compendium of Jewish history down to his time, but is especially valuable for der.
information concerning the settlement and history of the Jews in Ilollaial, particularly in Amsterdam, Indeed, for the history of the German and Polish Jews there, it is almost the only source of information. Proof of the great interest aroused by the book is to be found in Ihe fact that as early as 17G7 The edition that ajiit was reprinted in Filrth. peared in Amsterdam in 1771, entitled " Keter Jlalkut " or "Sheerit Yisrael," contained an additional chapter continuing the history of the Jews up to This chapter, however, does not the year 1770. appear to have been written by Amelander, but by Dutch translation of the publisher of the work. " Sheerit Yisrael," which appeared in 18.').5, was made by the journalist, L. Goudsmit, then living in Am-
A
sterdam, and contained numerous annotations by Gabriel Polak. BiBLioGRAPiiT
Biopraphlcal statements In the footnotes to ttie
preface of Goud.smit's edilion ot Sheerit Yit^rael; St«inscbnelder. Cat. BixU. No. (Xm : FQrsl, ISihl. Juil. II. SaO ; Rabbln"vlcz, Katalng, No. 12 (No. 917): Roest, Cat. lierBnsenthnV-
sclxn p,
Ml
Bilil.
1.
ta.iU: Zedner. Cat. Hcbr. limks, lirit.
Benjiicoh, <tzar )w-.'icfariiii, pp. 218,
J.
AMEMAR
Mus.
XS.
Vr.
.V compound word, ( = Ami Mar) which the first element is thi' iirenonieii, the second a title often found among the Jewish .s;iges in Babylonia, and meaning "master" (compare the dictionary 'Aruk under the word "Abaye"). There are two Babylonian teachers always quoted by that
of
name
alone.
I.: An araora of the third generation (fourth century), junior contemporary of H. Judah 1). Ezekiel CAli. Zarah. 48rt)and of RabSheshet (Hul. With the study of the Halakali he combined 107((). the study of the Scriptures, passages from which he often adduced to support either a legal enactment or a saying of the rabbis. Thus to the aphorism, by Alidimi of Haifa, that with the destruction of the tirst Temple the gift of prophecy was taken from the prophets and bestowed upon the sages, Amemar appends. "And the wise man is superior to the prophet, for thus the Bible says (Ps. xc. 12),
Atnemar
n03n 22^ S'331 and the prophet and as in all definitions the lesser '
is
is
a wise heart '; defined by the
greater, this jiroves that the wise man ranks higher than the iirophel " (B. B. 12«). This singular translation of the word " nabi " as a noun, in opposition to the ordinary conception of it as a verb, is also found in the Targum in Ibn Ezra on the passage, in the name of Closes ibn Gikatella, and also in Maimonides' "Moreli," ii. chap. 38, end, and has recently been adopted by Griltz in his " Kritischer Commentar zu den Psalmen," nil lor. II.: senior contemi)orary and friend
Amemar
A
Rab Ashi, the projector of the Babylonian Talmud, with whom he frequently discus.sed important
of
halakot (B. M. 08a; Ber. 12a; Bez. 22a Ket. 21*; Kid. 72A; B. K. 79a; Hul. 53A, SSa). Amemar reestablished the college at Nehardea, an<I restored it it having been deto its original reputable position stroyed over a century before by Odenathus (Bar Nazar, Ket. 51J, Y"er. 'Ter. viii. 46J; GrStz, 2d ed., iv., note 28) and was its rector for more than thirty
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