JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

elder, will
as sitting “before the gate, in the place of the mighty on the
threshing floor” (Aqht A, V, lines 5ff., Pritchard, Texts, 151).
Participation in the assembly of the elders was considered a
great honor (Prov. 31:23; Job 29:7ff.), and appears as such also
in Greek literature (Iliad, 1:490; 4:225; et al.).
[Moshe Weinfeld]
In the Talmud
During the mishnaic period the name zaken (“elder”) was reserved
for scholars, and particularly members of the Sanhedrin
or bet din. The title was regarded as equivalent to a sage,
and was unconnected with age, as was emphasized by regarding
the word as a notarikon: “The zaken is none other than a
sage, and the word means zeh she-kanah ḥokhmah (“one who
has acquired wisdom”; Kid. 32b). Thus one reads of the elders
of Bet Shammai and the elders of Bet Hillel (Ber. 11a), of the
“elders of the bet din” who supervised the high priest before
the Day of Atonement (Yoma 1:3 and 5), and of “Rabban Gamaliel
and the elders who were traveling by ship” (Shab. 16:8;
Ma’as Sh. 5:9; cf. also *Zaken Mamre). The word zaken hardly
occurs with regard to local government (the “elders of the
city” of. Sot. 9:5 and 6 is a reference to Deut. 21:3), although
in the Book of Judith, the elders of the city or of the people
appear as the main authority of the beleaguered city. It seems
that the institution of “the seven good men of the city” who
were responsible for its affairs was confined to Babylon. The
Mishnah (Meg. 3:1) states that if the people of a town sell a
synagogue or other sacred object, the purchaser may not use
it for purposes of lesser sanctity. Where the Babylonian Talmud
(Meg. 26a, 27a) makes the reservation that this does not
apply in cases where the “seven good men of the city” stipulated
at the time of the sale that the synagogue or the sacred
object could so be used, the parallel passage in the Jerusalem
Talmud merely mentions the stipulation but has no reference
to the seven communal leaders. Nevertheless Josephus (Ant.
4:214–4) refers to the seven men who ruled the city in Ereẓ
Israel, and the Syriac Baruch mentions “the seven elders of
the people” (II Bar. 44:1).
[Louis Isaac Rabinowitz]
Middle Ages and Modern Period
In the Middle Ages and early modern times the term “elder”
or “elders” appears both as a titular synonym for scholar and
sage as well as a frequent description for the unpaid lay members
in the leadership on the boards of communities within
the framework of the *Councils of the Lands. It can also be
regarded as an honorific description for members of the ruling
aristocracy of wealth and learning in the communities of
the period. The designation disappears almost entirely from
the middle of the 18th century for both communal leaders as
well as scholars (except for the fossilized expression zaken veyoshev
bi-yshivah used as a title in ultra-conservative circles).
Its disuse was the natural corollary of a diminished reverence
for age and the rise of a mentality that refused to equate it with
wisdom and leadership qualities. It is not accidental that antisemitic
vilification in modern times fastened on the term
“elder” and attempted to turn it into a horror image. Exploiting
the feelings of revulsion against the notion of scheming
old men and recalling the use of the term in the Jewish hierarchy
and tradition, it conjured up a new Jewish bogey in the
shape of the *Elders of Zion (“Sages de Sion”). The Nazis in
their calculated policy of fragmentation and foisting a spurious
leadership on the Jews turned to the use of the name
Judenaelteste (“elders of the Jews”) for some of the functionaries
in this leadership.
[Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson]
Bibliography: J.L. McKenzie, in: Analecta Biblica, 10 (1959),
388–400; H. Klengel, in: Orientalia, 29 (1960), 357–75; de Vaux, Anc
Isr, 68–70; Evans, in: JRH, 2 (1962), 1–12; H. Klengel, Zeitschrift fuer
Assyriologie, 23 (1965), 223ff.; H. Tadmor, in: Journal of World History,
11 (1968), 3–23; H. Reviv, in: Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 12 (1969), 283–97; Baron, Community, index.
Add. Bibliography: T. Wills, Elders of the City (2001); A. Rof,
“The Organization of the Judiciary in Deuteronomy,” in: M. Daviau
et al. (eds.), World of the Arameans (2002), 92–112.
ELDER, WILL (1921– ), U.S. cartoonist. Elder, who was born
in the Bronx, N.Y., attended the High School of Music and Art,
where he began a lifelong friendship with a classmate and future
collaborator, Harvey *Kurtzman, in stinging and hilarious
cartoon art. Elder’s penchant for zany humor flowered early
with legendary stunts: when he failed to show up for class, he
was discovered by a nervous teacher hanging by his neck in
the school coat closet, his face chalked white. Another time
he dressed joints of beef in clothing and spread them across
train tracks, moaning, “Poor Schlomie! He fell on the tracks,”
horrifying passers-by.
Elder began his comic book career in 1946, writing and
drawing a feature called Rufus Debree in Toy Town Comics.
After several cartooning positions, Elder in 1952 joined Kurtzman,
creator of Mad magazine, which gave him a chance to
display his zany style of humor. Elder penciled and inked his
own stories from the first issue on. He was credited with being
the main creator of the early, zany Mad “chicken fat” style. His
art was most notable for having numerous visual jokes hidden
in the nooks, crannies, and backgrounds of the stories he
drew. Elder became such a sensation at Mad that issue number
22 featured a book-length biography of him. Elder and
Kurtzman left Mad in 1956 and worked together on a number
of projects, including some short-lived satirical magazines. In
one of them, Help!, Elder and Kurtzman created an innocent
Candide-like character, Goodman Beaver. Inspired by a lusty
spoof of the comic-book character Archie, Elder and Kurtzman
turned the innocent Goodman Beaver, a man, into a sexy
woman and named her Little Annie Fanny. Playboy magazine
published the four-to-seven-page stories, written by Kurtzman
and painted by Elder, from 1962 to 1988. The strip took
comic art to new heights with sophisticated and savage satire
and carefully painted stories.
Over the years, Elder’s genres included crime, science
fiction, horror, fantasy, war, and sex. In 2003, Fantagraphics
published Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art, a definitive ca-
296 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6