MENAHEM BEN ELIAKIM:

By: Richard Gottheil, M. Seligsohn

German scholar of the fourteenth century; a native of Bingen. He was the author of "'Aruk Goren," a dictionary of the Talmud, with German translations of all the difficult words, particularly those taken from Arabic and Greek. The basis of this work is the "'Aruk" of Nathan ben Jehiel, from which Menahem made many extracts and to which he added new matter. The meaning of the title probably is "a condensed 'Aruk," but Wolf ("Bibl. Hebr." iv., No. 1426b) reads = "Short 'Aruk," and the Latin translation "Aruch Breve" is given by Emden in "Ḳohelet Dawid" (No. 195d), although it does not correspond to the Hebrew given by Isaac Metz. Wolf concluded that, in spite of the similarity of contents, the "'Aruk Goren" is not to be identified with the anonymous "'Aruk ha-Ḳaẓer."

G. M. Sel.