JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

EITAN, RAPHAEL (“Raful”; 1929–2004), Israeli soldier, 11th chief of staff of the IDF. Eitan was born in Israel and began his
military career as an officer in the *Palmaḥ and was wounded
in the battle for Jerusalem during the War of Independence.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign he was one of the first to
parachute into the Mitla Pass, and took a prominent part in the
campaign in Sinai during the Six-Day War. He commanded
the Israeli commando force which raided Beirut airport in
1968 and was later appointed chief infantry and paratroop officer.
During the Yom Kippur War his unit played a key role
in stemming the Syrian attack and advanced to within 25
miles of Damascus.
In 1978 he was appointed chief of staff in succession to
Lt.-General Mordecai (“Motta”) *Gur, taking up his appointment
in April. During his service as chief of staff he initiated
the “Raful Youth” project, a special program for youth from
underprivileged backgrounds. In his position as chief of staff
he commanded the Israeli forces in the 1982 Lebanon War.
In 1983 he was criticized by the *Kahan Commission – established
to investigate the causes of the killing by Phalangist
forces of Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla
in west Beirut – for failure to try to prevent the massacre,
but was not dismissed since his term as chief of staff was
by then nearly over.
In 1983 Eitan formed the Tzomet political party, which
united with the ultra-right-wing Teḥiyah party before the elections
for the Eleventh Knesset in 1984. He was elected to the
Eleventh on the joint slate and to the Twelfth Knesset in 1988
with Tzomet running independently, having split with Teḥiyah.
Tzomet contested the 1992 elections on a hawkish, anti-religious
platform and won eight seats, making it the fourth largest
party in the Knesset; it remained in the opposition rather than
join Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor-led coalition. He was elected again
to the Knesset in the 1996 elections, running on the combined
*Likud-Gesher-Tzomet ticket, and was appointed minister of
agriculture and environment and deputy prime minister in the
*Netanyahu government. His influence on government policy
was minimal, and as a result he lost public support. In 1998
he announced his candidacy for prime minister, but withdrew
later on. In the 1999 elections, Tzomet failed to win any seats
and as a consequence Eitan retired from political and public
life. He drowned in November 2004 when he was swept off a
breakwater in Ashdod port on a stormy day.
[Fern Lee Seckbach / Rohan Saxena and Susan Hattis Rolef
(2nd ed.)]
EITINGER, LEO S. (1912–1996), psychiatrist and pioneer researcher
in psychotraumatology. Born in Lomnice, Czechoslovakia,
and graduating from medical school in 1937, Eitinger
fled from the Nazis in 1939 and came to Norway as a refugee
with a Nansen passport. He was given permission to work as
a resident in psychiatry in Norway until the Nazi occupation
of Norway in 1940. In 1942 he was deported to Auschwitz together
with the Norwegian Jews and was one of the very few
to survive. After the war he returned to Norway, where he
eitingon, max
specialized in psychiatry. Eitinger wrote his doctoral thesis on
“Psykiatriske undersøkelser blant flyktninger i Norge” (“Psychiatric
Examination among Refugees in Norway,” 1958). In
1954 Eitinger was awarded the King’s Gold Medal for his study
of the influence of military life on young Norwegian men’s
mental health. He is regarded as one of the founders of victimology,
the study of the effects of aggression upon the victim.
After spending a year in Israel (1961–62) examining survivors
of concentration camps, he published Concentration Camp
Survivors in Norway and Israel (1964). This work, together
with “Mortality and Morbidity after Excessive Stress” (1973),
were his greatest achievements. He described a “concentration
camp syndrome” comprising anxiety and depression in
the survivors. He ascribed this to physical trauma. Eitinger,
professor of psychiatry at Oslo University, was president of
the Norwegian Psychiatric Association from 1963 to 1967. In
1966 he became head of the University Psychiatric Clinic. As
professor emeritus, Leo Eitinger continued his research and
writing uninterruptedly. He was awarded the World Veterans
Federation’s Prize in 1995 for his unrelenting work for war veterans.
He was also appointed Commander of the Royal Norwegian
St. Olav Order, an award given to him by the king of
Norway for his great contribution to medical science. He and
his wife, Lisl Eitinger, devoted their lives to the promotion of
human rights and the fight against injustice and racism. In this
spirit they established the University of Oslo’s Human Rights
Award, the Lisl and Leo Eitinger Prize.
Bibliography: L. Weisaeth, Echoes of the Holocaust, 5 (July
1997).
[Inger-Lise Grusd / Lynn Claire Feinberg (2nd ed.)]
EITINGON, MAX (1881–1943), psychoanalyst. Born in Mohilev,
Russia, Eitingon was raised in Leipzig, Germany, where
his parents settled. He studied philosophy, first in Heidelberg
and then in Marburg, where he was a pupil of Hermann
*Cohen. However, he subsequently moved to the study of
medicine, and qualified as a physician at Zurich in 1909. There
he joined the group of psychiatrists headed by Bleuler and
Jung, who tried to give Sigmund *Freud’s theories a broader
basis by applying them to psychiatric diseases. While still a
medical student in 1907, Eitingon went to Vienna, where (as
Freud himself disclosed) he was the first foreign visitor to
study psychoanalysis at its source. Later he settled in Berlin.
During World War I he served in the Austrian medical corps,
and his encounter with war neuroses induced him to establish
clinics for psychoanalytical treatment. In 1919 he was appointed
a member of the so-called “Committee” – a small inner
circle at the heart of the psychoanalytical movement. In
1920, together with Karl *Abraham and E. Simmel, he founded
the Berlin Psychoanalytic Polyclinic to provide treatment for
the underprivileged and to establish a program for the teaching
of psychoanalysis. This Polyclinic was in 1924 registered as
the Berlin Institute for Psychoanalysis, and became the model
on which later institutes were based. Eitingon was elected
president of the International Psychoanalytical Association
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 279