APT():

By: Richard Gottheil

A small town, not far from Avignon, in the department of Vaucluse, France. In the Middle Ages it was inhabited by Jews, who had a separate quarter assigned to them. About the end of the thirteenth century the poet Isaac ben Abraham Gorni visited Apt and wrote afterward a poem in honor of its Jewish community, which had given him a very hearty welcome. In the responsa of Solomon ben Adret several Jews of Apt are mentioned. In the Bodleian manuscript No. 2550 there is found a correspondence with a certain R. Samuel ben Mordecai (Neubauer, in "Rev. Et. Juives," xii. 87). In the British Museum manuscript, add. 22,089, there occurs a letter signed by Massif Jacob of Lunel, Durant del Portal, Nathan Vidal Bedersi, Meïr ben Abba Mari, and "us, some of the other members of the community of Apt." A Don Massif Jacob is signatory to another responsum, dated 1340.

Apt being a monosyllabic word, the common noun ("town") was sometimes prefixed to it, thus forming the compound word ("Aptville").

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