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Possible definitions for bael

Baal
God worshiped in many ancient Middle Eastern communities, especially among Canaanites, for whom he was a fertility deity. In the mythology of Canaan, he was locked in combat with Mot, the god of death and sterility; depending on the outcome of their struggles, seven-year cycles of fertility or famine would ensue. Baal was also king of gods, having seized the kingship from the sea god, Yamm. Baal worship was popular in Egypt from the later New Kingdom to its end (1400-1075 BC). The Aramaeans used the Babylonian pronunciation Bel; Bel became the Greek Belos, identified with Zeus. The Old Testament often refers to a specific local Baal or multiple Baalim.


Baeck
Prussian-Polish rabbi, spiritual leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period. After earning his PhD in philosophy at the Univ. of Berlin, he served as a rabbi in Silesia, Dü sseldorf, and Berlin, becoming the leading liberal Jewish religious thinker of his time. He synthesized Neo-Kantianism and rabbinic ethics in The Essence of Judaism (1905) and considered the Christian gospels as rabbinic literature in The Gospel as a Document of Jewish Religious History (1938). He negotiated with the Nazis to buy time for the German Jews; finally arrested, he was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he wrote and lectured on Plato and Kant. Liberated in 1945, the day before he was to be executed, he settled in England.


Baer
Prussian-Estonian embryologist. Studying chick development with his friend Christian Pander (1794-1865), Baer expanded Pander's concept of germ-layer formation to all vertebrates, thereby laying the foundation for comparative embryology. He emphasized that embryos of one species could resemble embryos (but not adults) of another, and that the younger the embryo the greater the resemblance, a concept in line with his belief that development proceeds from simple to complex, from like to different. He also discovered the mammalian ovum. His On the Development of Animals (2 vols., 1828-37) surveyed all existing knowledge on vertebrate development and established embryology as a distinct subject of research.


Baez
U.S. folksinger and activist. Born on Staten Island, N.Y., she moved often as a child, receiving little musical training. While still in her teens, her luminous soprano voice brought her to the forefront of the 1960s folk-song revival. An active participant in the protest movements of the 1960s and '70s, Baez made free concert appearances at civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War rallies. In 1964 she refused to pay federal taxes that went toward war expenses, and she was jailed twice in 1967. She published two books of memoirs.


bail
Temporary release of a prisoner in exchange for security given to guarantee the prisoner's appearance at a later hearing. It also refers to the actual security given (e.g., cash). Its main use today is to secure the freedom, pending trial, of ...

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