THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Abelites
Abensur, Daniel
62
the report of tlie Jesuit John Eder. lie wns killed by his father. Tjizanis AImU-s, Miinh 21. IIHM. lieeause he persisted in his desire to einlirace the Christian The father, wlio was thrown into prison, reliirion. Si>l)l. or Levy straniiled himself with his lijillin. Kurtzlmndl. was imprisoned as an alle.ired aeeoinpliee, and put to death with horrible tortures. The body of Simon was buried in the Teyn Chureh of
tury at Shcrwcnty. in Lithuania. His devotion to the" study of the Talminl was so intense that, according lo his grandsmi. the rablii of Kaniienetz, for twenty years he did not remove hiscliithes forsleep. Abelscin wrote a methodology of the Mishnali and inlroduclions to the Orderof Koda.shim .'ind Teharot under the title, "Zikron Yehudah" (Judah's Me-
Pralrue with iireat pomp an<l w ilh the honors due The report of the Jesuit is naturally a niartyr. one-sided, full of rniraeles and many improbabiliAn impartial inve.stigation of the sourees is ties.
been published, the introduction to Teharot. under Ihe sub-litle "Pithe Teharot " (Gates of Purity),
Only certain parts of
morial).
Ihe latter
work have
AVilna, 1851. and some Cdntributions lo a system of Ihe Mishnah and Halakah under the title, '"Huhak le-Zeker (Eiiirravcd for Riinendjiance), Wilna, P. B. istio. "
still
laekinj;.
BiBMonR.vrnv Jilliiiinii
Eder,
Mannhaftr
—
exirarts Aliiliv. I'mt'iic. IliiM In (instav Frc.vtaif'.i Bitikr mix ViiV'iiHI' hIk il : Allu Ziil. </. Jitil. IWl.
Kiialifii
from tills work <kr Tieulsrlicn
BrKtilinliiiheit iha Ziri'lf-
iirc
Simiiii.1 fcninil
nn. 514 ct sni.^ evidcntlv fnmi
llu-
saim- suurce. I).
ABELITES
(called also
tee): A Xorlh-Afriean Cliri.slian sect, probably of gnostic anteeedents, limited to a few small eommunilies in the neiirhborhood of Hippo in the time of Au.sustine. lute in the fourth or early in the fifth Doubtless the name refers to the son of century. Adam.Who wa.s supposed to have died childless. The recorded tenets of the sect were the following: (1) They contracted matrimony, yet abstained from connubial intercourse. (2) They regarded the procreation of children as unlawful, but soight to perpetuate their society by adopting for each Inisband and wife a male anil a "female child, who should inherit their property and adopt their continent form of married life. In case one of the ehildicn died, anAs they jiossessed other was adopted in its stead. considerable means, they foniul little dilliculty in securing the needful children. The remnant of the party was destroyed tnider the emperor Arca<lius In addition to the notice by Aiigustiue in 407. ("De Hivresibus Liber," p. 87), they are mentioned in the anonymous work, "Pra'destinatus," i. >>7. Some have supposed that their founder was a certain Abel of the immediately preceding lime but there are no facts to support this theory. Others have connected the Abelites with the Esseiies or Thcrapeuta-. A. II. N.
A
Kussiaii astronomer; bornat Diniaburtr. now Dvinsk, J lis eariy in 18GG died at Wilua, December 2(1, isiis. education was received at Ihe gymnasium of Riga, whence he graduated in 1887. gaining the gold medal. He proceeded to the University of Moscow, and, after srraduatinir in astronomy and geodesy, took a year's He course (lAi)2-ii:!) at the University "of Bciliir. afterward worked in the observatories of Pulkox-o In 1887. while at tlie Kiga and St. Petersburg.
gvmnasium. he published "Sboruik AlgebraieluHis treatise "O Padayuslichikh Zvyezdakh " was adopted by the University of JIoscow as a text-book for young astronomers. Another of his works, "O Dvizhenii Xyekotorykh Meteornykh Potokov," was published" in 1S98 by the Imperial Russian Astronomical Society of St. I'etersAbelman also burg. of which he was a member. published a series of articles on astronomy in the "Kusskiya Vyedomosti." in "Xovosti." in "Astronomische Xachrichten," and in some other German sliikh
Zadach."
periodicals.
BiBLioGR.vpnY: Achiassaf, 1899; rnskliod. Jnn.
10, 1899.
II.
ABELSON, JTJDAH BEN ISAAC
A
R.
mer-
the greater jiart of his time to Stud)-; lived toward the end of the eighteenth cen-
chant,
uliii di-viitcil
See lux.
ABENABAZ. Sec .Vnit.vs, Mosks ihn. ABENABEZ, MOYSES. See Moses ben Moses OF Cai.ai
Abelonii or Abeloni-
ABELMAN, ILIA SOLOMONOVICH
ABEN IN JEWISH NAMES. V1
1).
ABENATAR MELO, DAVID. See Mei.o, Da A rit. ABENDANA (nJT pN) The name of a num.r.i.N
111
ber of Spanish- and Portuguese-Jewish (Sephardic)
The tii-st perfamilies in Amsterdam and London. son to assume it was the Marano Francisco Nufiez Pereyra, who fled from Spain thnniL'h ilicad of the Inquisition at the beginning of the seventeenth century and settled in Amsterdam, where he married his cousin
The chil Justa Pereyra. dren born of this marriage died, and, their death being attributed by liis wife to the fact that he had not been received into the Covenant of Abraham, they separated perrite was until that formed. He took the name
David Abendana. and was one of the founders of the first svnairosrue in Amsterdam. "HediedFeb.
He
two
left
sons.
14. UK.").
Manuel
Manuel Abraham. washakam of the Amsterdam
Seal of the .Abendana Fiinilly.
(From the Ari-hivMof
th* Amrttr-
ilam Portu)pji»c Con^cgatioD.)
and
congregation and died
having contributed much
to the spiritResides those menUid edification of his brethren. tioned below, the names of other members of the Abendana faniilv will be found in Ihe lists at the end of D. II. de Castro, "De Synagogue de Portugeesch-Israelietisch Gemeente t"c Amsterdam, 1875,"
June
l(i()7,
b").
There
is
a modern Spanish
(Junrt. Kev."..
name " Abendanu " ("Jew.
n-2()).
Aaron ben Samuel Costa Abendana reader in .Viiisterdam abnut 172li-;!(l. Abraham di Costa Abendana Tabnudie acadeniv 'E/. I.Iayyim in
A
proof-
A memljer of the Amsterdam
iu
17r,l.
A
brother of Jacob and Daniel Abendana : Isaac Abendana. and author of an apologetic work dedicated to Isaac Levi Xinu'nes. bearing the title, " Respuesta a las Proposiciones de uno (pie Sieiido de la Xaeion Judaica por se :Mostrar tan Catc'ilico Ciistiano" (JIanuscript in the Stadtbibliothek at HambiirL'*.
Isaac
Hayyim
de Brito Abendana:
Hakam
of the Portuguese community in Amsterdam, where he died at the great age of one hundred years. April He published " Sermao E.xhoitatoria. .m5. 1760. He was at the head of the Talnunlsterdam. 17o3. ical academv 'Ez Hayyim, known in Spanish as Arbol de las'Vidas. Assis"tcd by his colleagues, Solo-
mon Ayllox and D.kiel Israel Atuias, and by
