JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

48:28). It is also described as the southern border of Solomon’s
kingdom: “from the entrance of *Hamath unto the Brook
of Egypt” (I Kings 8:65) and the eastern extremity of Egypt
(II Kings 24:7). Assyrian inscriptions of *Sargon and *Esarhaddon
also refer to it as the Muṣur or Muṣri River. Its identification
with Wadi el-Arish is found in the Septuagint (Isa.
27:12), which translates it “Rhinokoroura,” the Greek name of
the city near its mouth.
The river, about 150 mi. (240 km.) long, drains about
12,500 sq. mi. (32,500 sq. km.) in the northern part of the
*Sinai Peninsula. It absorbs part of the heavy flood waters inundating
it, and the area near its mouth is rich in wells.
Bibliography: Abel, Geog, 1 (1933), 301; Pritchard, Texts,
286, 290, 292; Aharoni, Land, index. Add. Bibliography: S. Ahituv,
Joshua (1995), 243.
[Moshe Kochavi]
EḤAD MI YODE’A (Heb. עֵ ַ דֹ וי יִמ דָחֶ א; “Who Knows One?”),
song incorporated in the Ashkenazi rite among the concluding
songs of the Passover *Haggadah, whose aim was “to keep the
children awake” until the end of the seder (cf. Pes. 108b–109a).
The song consists of 13 stanzas, made up of questions (Who
knows One?.. Two?.. Three?.. etc.) and their corresponding answers.
The reply to each succeeding question also repeats the
previous answers. The last verse reads: Who knows thirteen?
I know thirteen. Thirteen are the attributes of God; twelve the
tribes of Israel; eleven the stars (in Joseph’s dream); ten the
Commandments; nine the months of pregnancy; eight the
days of circumcision; seven the days of the week; six the books
of the Mishnah; five the books of the Torah; four the matriarchs
(Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel); three the patriarchs
(Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob); two the tables of the Covenant;
One is our God in heaven and on earth. (Some Haggadot have
substituted other answers for the eighth and ninth questions of
the traditional form. They read: nine are the Jewish holidays of
the year, eight the Ḥanukkah lights.) In some places the song
is chanted responsively: one person, usually the leader of the
seder, asks the questions, and the whole company answers,
each person responding as quickly as possible in an effort to
finish the answer first. Eḥad Mi Yode’a is first found in Haggadot
of the 16th century and only in those of the Ashkenazi
ritual. Many scholars believed that it originated in Germany
in the 15th century. Perles showed its similarity to a popular
German pastoral song, “Guter Freund Ich Frage Dich” (one
of the “Hobelbanklied” German folk songs), the first stanza of
which ends with the same words as the Passover song. In fact,
the identical words of this line of the pastorale are given as
the German translation of the first answer of Eḥad Mi Yode’a
in many early Haggadot. The Christian theme of the original
was changed to one of Jewish content. Zunz discovered that
the Hebrew song was used in Avignon as a festive table song
chanted on other holidays as well, and Geiger noted other
German counterparts. Since then it has been found among
the liturgical music of Jews from Ceylon and Cochin, where
it forms part of their Sabbath songs for the entertainment of
ehrenburg, ilya grigoryevich
bride and groom. Some scholars have even traced it to Greek
or English church songs and Scottish nursery songs.
Bibliography: D. Goldschmidt, Haggadah shel Pesaḥ, Mekoroteha
ve-Toledoteha (1960), 98; C. Zibrt, Ohlas obradnich pisni …
(1928).
EHRENBERG, VICTOR LEOPOLD (1891–1976), German
historian. Born in Altona, Ehrenberg was professor of ancient
history at the German University in Prague (1929–39). The
Nazi regime forced his immigration to Great Britain (1939),
where he was visiting lecturer at several universities, and
from 1949 to 1957 lecturer and reader in ancient history at the
University of London. He was joint founder of the London
Classical Society and joint founder and editor of the journal
Historia. The bulk of Ehrenberg’s work was in ancient Greek
history. These include Neugruender des Staates (1925); Alexander
und Aegypten (1926); and Alexander and the Greeks
(1938). The People of Aristophanes (1943, 19512) is a sociological
account of life in ancient Athens, based upon the surviving
works of old Attic comedy; Sophocles and Pericles (1954) deals
with the spiritual trends of the fifth century B.C.E.; From Solon
to Socrates (1968) describes Greek civilization of the sixth
and fifth centuries B.C.E. Many of his numerous articles were
gathered in Aspects of the Ancient World (1946) and Polis und
Imperium (1965).
Bibliography: H. Schaefer, in: Historia, 10 (1961), 387–408
(includes list of works); Ancient Society and Institutions, Studies Presented
to Victor Ehrenberg on his 75th Birthday (1966). Add. Bibliography:
P.R. Franke, “Victor Ehrenberg – Ein deutsches Gelehrtenschicksal,”
in: R. Schneider (ed.), Juden in Deutschland (1994),
309ff.
[Irwin L. Merker]
EHRENBURG, ILYA GRIGORYEVICH (1891–1967), Soviet
Russian writer and journalist. Born to an assimilated middleclass
Jewish family in Kiev and, with no ties to Jewish religion
or culture, Ehrenburg is typical of many Jewish left-wing intellectuals
of this century, whom Hitler and Stalin would not
allow to forget their origins. A feeling of outrage at antisemitism
recurs in Ehrenburg’s books and journalistic output
throughout his career and was a major factor in his youthful
revolt against Czarist and, at the end of his life, against Stalinist
injustice. Forced to flee Russia because of participation in
revolutionary activities, he lived abroad, mainly in Paris, between
1908 and 1917. Ehrenburg returned to Russia after the
February Revolution, criticizing sharply in his essays the October
Revolution and its leaders, Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and
others. He left again in 1921 and lived mainly in Berlin, where
he witnessed the rise of the Nazis to power. Understanding
that Nazi ideology was a danger to the world, he proposed to
Stalin in September 1934 to turn the International Organization
of Revolutionary Writers into a movement against Fascism
and in support of the Soviet Union. His proposal was
accepted. He did not permanently settle in the U.S.S.R. until
shortly before the Nazi attack on the U.S.S.R. in the summer
of 1941. On the eve of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 237