Beer-Bing, Isaiah

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BEER-BING, ISAIAH

BEER-BING, ISAIAH (1759–1805), one of the leaders in the struggle for the "regeneration" of the Jews of France. He wrote a number of pamphlets including a refutation of an anti-Jewish pamphlet by Aubert Dufayet (Lettre du Sr I.B.B…. à l'auteur anonyme d'un écrit intitulé: Le cri du citoyen contre les juifs, 1787, 18052). Beer-Bing was appointed to the commission headed by Malesherbes to improve the status of the Jews in 1788. In 1799 he drew up a memorandum on the community of his birthplace Metz. He was a member of the municipal council of Metz from 1790 and became the administrator of the saltworks in eastern France. He was on the editorial committee of the Décade philosophique. Beer-Bing translated the Phaedon of Moses *Mendelssohn from German into French and Hebrew (Sefer Hasharat ha-Nefesh, 1786–87, republished many times), a Song of Zion by Judah Halevi from Hebrew into French, and a fragment from the Beḥinat Olam by *Jedaiah ha-Penini (in Essai sur la régénération… des juifs by his friend the abbé *Grégoire, 1789).

bibliography:

E. Carmoly in: Revue orientale, 2 (1842), 337f.

[Moshe Catane]