JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

eisenstadter, meir ben judah leib
reaucratization and Debureaucratization” in Administrative
Science Quarterly, 4 (1959), 302–20, and Israeli Society (1967).
Other books include Tradition, Change, and Modernity (1983),
Transformation of Israeli Society (1986), and European Civilization
in a Comparative Perspective (1987).
[Werner J. Cahnman and Pearl J. Lieff]
EISENSTADTER, MEIR BEN JUDAH LEIB (d. 1852),
rabbi, author, and liturgical poet (paytan). Eisenstadter was
born in Schossberg (Sastin), but in his youth moved to Eisenstadt,
from which he took his name. He was also known as
“Maharam Esh” (Hebrew acronym for Morenu ha-Rav Meir
Eisenshtadt – “our teacher, the rabbi Eisenstadter”). He studied
under Moses *Sofer and married the daughter of David
Deutsch, the rabbi of Nove Mesto in Slovakia, where Eisenstadter
was appointed head of the yeshivah. After serving as
rabbi in Baja, Balassagyarmat (1815–35), he was appointed
rabbi of Ungvar in 1835 and was regarded, together with Moses
*Schick, as the leading rabbi of Hungary. In Ungvar, too, he
headed a large yeshivah and many of the future rabbis of Hungary
were his pupils. He took an active part in the communal
life of Hungarian Jewry and exercised a profound influence
on the course it was to take. He vehemently opposed the progressives
who desired to introduce religious changes and reforms.
He was the author of Imrei Esh, responsa in two parts
(1852–64); Imrei Yosher, sermons (Ungvar, 1864); Imrei Binah,
novellae on a number of tractates (1866), and, with the same
title, his novellae and those of his son on the laws of *shehitah,
appended to A.Z. Schorr’s Simlah Ḥadashah (1927); Imrei Esh,
in two parts, expositions of the Pentateuch with the novellae
of his father-in-law and his son (1901); and Zikhron Yehudah,
containing his testament and novellae (1900). The greatest
rabbis of Hungary and Galicia including Solomon *Kluger of
Brod, Ḥayyim *Halberstam of Neu-Sandec (Nowy Sacz), and
Simon *Sofer of Cracow addressed problems to him. His son
Menahem succeeded him as rabbi in Ungvar.
Bibliography: M. Eisenstadt, Zikhron Yehudah (1900);
P.Z. Schwartz, Shem ha-Gedolim me-Ereẓ Hagar, 2 (1914), 1b, no. 15;
A. Stern, Meliẓei Esh al Ḥodshei Kislev-Tevet (19622), 112b, no. 436;
H.Y. Braun, Toledot Gedolei Yisrael Anshei Shem (1943), 1–12; J. Spiegel,
in: Arim ve-Immahot be-Yisrael, 4 (1950), 9–12; S. Reinhasz, in:
Enẓiklopedyah shel Galuyyot, 7 (1959), 403–10.
[Itzhak Alfassi]
EISENSTAEDT, ALFRED (1898–1995), photographer. Born
in Dirschau, West Prussia (now Tczew, Poland), Eisenstaedt
was the pre-eminent photojournalist of his time, whose pioneering
images for Life magazine helped define American
photojournalism. Over a career that lasted more than 50 years,
Eisenstaedt became famous as the quintessential Life photographer,
producing more than 2,500 picture stories and 90 covers
for the magazine. His most famous photograph, of an exuberant
American sailor kissing a nurse in a dance-like dip in Times
Square on V-J Day, August 14, 1945, summed up the euphoria
many Americans felt as the war came to a close. It is the most
widely reproduced of the magazine’s millions of photographs.
Another of his best-known images shows Joseph Goebbels, the
Nazi propaganda minister, in 1933, glaring at the camera. “Here
are the eyes of hate,” the photographer later wrote.
When Alfred was eight, his father, a merchant, moved the
family to Berlin, and they remained there until Hitler came to
power. At 17, Alfred was drafted into the German army and
served on the Flanders front, where he was wounded in both
legs. Sent home, he recuperated for a year before he could
walk unaided. He used the time to visit museums and study
light and composition. Although he became a belt and button
salesman, he saved his money and bought photographic
equipment. In 1927, while vacationing with his parents in
Czechoslovakia, he took a photograph of a woman playing
tennis. He was on a hillside 50 yards away, and the photo captured
the long shadow the woman cast on the court. He sold
it to Der Welt Spiegel for about $12.
By the age of 31, he became a full-time photographer,
working for Pacific and Atlantic Photos, which became the
Associated Press. At the time he began working with the innovative
Leica 35 mm. camera, which had been invented four
years earlier. His assignments included portraits of statesmen
and famous artists. By 1933 he was sent to Italy to shoot the
first meeting of Hitler and Mussolini. Two years after Hitler
took power, Eisenstaedt immigrated to the United States,
where he was soon hired with three other photographers, including
Margaret *Bourke-White, to be the original photographers
for the new Life magazine. The first issue carried five
pages of Eisenstaedt’s pictures. He became known for his ability
to bring back visually striking pictures from almost any
assignment. Among the many celebrities he photographed
were Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe,
George Bernard Shaw, and a smoldering Marlene Dietrich in
top hat and tails. His mastery of the Leica allowed him to capture
his subjects in unguarded moments, creating a sense of
intimacy. In a 1947 picture, for example, the physicist J. Robert
*Oppenheimer puffs on a cigarette as he stands in front of
a blackboard covered with mathematical formulas.
Eisenstaedt became an American citizen in 1942 and
traveled overseas to document the effects of the war. He received
many awards and honors, including the Presidential
Medal of Arts and the Master of Photography Award, given
by the International Center of Photography. He continued to
work until shortly before his death. In 1993 he photographed
President Clinton, his wife, and their daughter on Martha’s
Vineyard, Mass.
He was the subject of many exhibitions and was the author
of many books, including Witness to Our Time (1966),
The Eye of Eisenstaedt (1969), Eisenstaedt’s Guide to Photography
(1978), and Eisenstaedt: Germany (1981). At age 81 he
returned to Germany for the first time for an exhibition of
pictures he had taken there in the 1920s and 1930s. Things in
Germany seemed different, he said, from when he left. “You
couldn’t call it prettier, but maybe more relaxed.”
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
272 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6