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Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Benjamin [Heb.,=son of fortune], younger son of Jacob and Rachel, eponymous ancestor of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. His mother, dying, named him Benoni bĕnōˈnī [key] [Heb.,=son of my sorrow]. ...

Cresap, Michael

(Encyclopedia)Cresap, Michael krēˈsăp [key], 1742–75, American frontiersman and soldier, b. Allegany co., Md. A Native American fighter, he was accused by Thomas Jefferson and others of massacring the family o...

Judah ha-Levi

(Encyclopedia)Judah ha-Levi or Judah Halevy häˌlēˈvī [key], c.1075–1141, Jewish rabbi, poet, and philosopher, b. Tudela, Spain. His poems—secular, religious, and nationalist—are filled with a serene and ...

Lwoff, André

(Encyclopedia)Lwoff, André äNdrāˈ ləwôfˈ [key], 1902–94, French microbiologist, b. Ainay-le-Château, Allier dept., central France, of Russian-Polish origin. He was educated in France and in 1925 began a l...

Rosenfeld, Morris

(Encyclopedia)Rosenfeld, Morris rōˈzənfĕlt [key], 1862–1923, Jewish poet, b. Russian Poland. His name was originally Moshe Jacob Alter. He worked as a tailor in London and as a diamond grinder in Amsterdam be...

River Brethren

(Encyclopedia)River Brethren, name used to designate certain Christian bodies originating in 1770, during a revival movement among German settlers in E Pennsylvania. In the 1750s, Mennonite refugees from Switzerlan...

Lew, Jack

(Encyclopedia)Lew, Jack (Jacob Joseph Lew), 1955–, American government official, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (1978), Georgetown Univ. Law School (1983). A Democrat, he first worked politics at 17 in Eugene Mc...

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

(Encyclopedia)Ladysmith Black Mambazo mämbäzˈō [key], choral group formed in 1965 in Ladysmith, South Africa, founded and led (until 2014) by Joseph Shabalala (1941–2020). The group, which sings with a precis...

Wise, Stephen Samuel

(Encyclopedia)Wise, Stephen Samuel, 1874–1949, American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader, b. Budapest, grad. College of the City of New York, 1891, Ph.D. Columbia, 1901. He served as a rabbi in New York City (1893...

Ross, Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Ross, Alexander, 1783–1856, Canadian fur trader and pioneer, b. Scotland. He went to Canada in 1805, taught school in Upper Canada, and in 1810 left for Oregon as a clerk in John Jacob Astor's Pacif...