JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

el paso
Elon’s attitude in the study of Jewish Law can be characterized
by three main qualities: (1) research into all periods
of Jewish Law (unlike his predecessors, who focused on the
biblical and talmudic periods) and the intensive use of posttalmudic
legal sources, in particular the vast responsa literature;
(2) historical-analytical methodology, analytically examining
each legal institution while examining at the same
time how its development was affected both by time and place;
(3) emphasis on the potential of Jewish Law to contribute to
the modern legal system and indication of how its principals
should be implemented in modern law, legislation, and judgments
alike.
Elon published many works on the history and nature
of Jewish Law and the relationship between it and the modern
State of Israel, including The Freedom of the Person of the
Debtor in Jewish Law (1964, 20002), Religious Legislation in
the Laws of the State of Israel and within the Jurisdiction of the
Civil and Rabbinical Courts (1968), Jewish Law (Mishpat Ivri):
Cases and Materials (1999), and The Status of Women: Tradition
and Transition (2004). From 1968 to 1971 he was editor
of the Jewish Law section of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, whose
entries were subsequently collected in his Principles of Jewish
Law. By 1984 he had edited ten volumes of the Annual of the
Institute for Research in Jewish Law of the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem and also edited Indices to the Responsa of Jewish
Law (5 vols.).
Elon established Chairs of Jewish Law at the Harvard
School of Law, New York University, and McGill University,
Montreal, and was the founder of the Institute for Research
in Jewish Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1963)
and the Center for the Study and Research of Jewish Law at
Sha’arei Mishpat College (1997), where he served as dean until
2003. From 1995 Elon also served as the president of the
World Union of Jewish Studies and continued to serve as editor
of the Jewish Law section of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia
Judaica.
[Aviad Hacohen (2nd ed.)]
EL PASO, west Texas city bordering New Mexico and situated
on the Rio Grande River across from Juarez, Chihuahua,
Mexico; Jewish population (1969) was approximately 4,500 out
of a total population of 400,000. Its general population increased
significantly with the expansion of the Southwest and
numbered 750,000 in the early 2000s but the increase of the
Jewish population did not keep pace proportionately. There
were approximately 5,000 Jews in El Paso in 2005. The Jewish
population was unusual in its low median age range, its large
proportion of American-born newcomer families, and its large
proportion of third-, fourth- and fifth-generation American
Jews. Despite its geographic isolation from important Jewish
population centers, the El Paso community maintained organizational
counterparts of several Jewish institutions and
philanthropic agencies. El Paso was a major crossroad for the
east-west and north-south trails of the 1800s. There were Jews
in El Paso as early as 1850 and major influxes of Jews occurred
after each of the world wars. Many Jewish pioneers were involved
in business transactions with Mexican government
and anti-government forces, with the U.S. Indian Bureau, and
with the U.S. Quartermaster Corps. Many Jewish soldiers were
stationed at Fort Bliss and other military installations in the
area and a sizable number of these stayed on after discharge.
Mount Sinai Temple, the oldest Jewish institution in El Paso,
is located in the Mission Hills district of the west side of the
Franklin Mountains where most Jews reside. In 2005 this Reform
congregation consisted of approximately 480 members.
Congregation B’nai Zion (Conservative) is located further
west and has a comparable membership. Although there was
an Orthodox congregation in El Paso between the world wars,
none existed by the 1960s until Chabad came to town.
The El Paso Jewish Federation coordinates Jewish organizational
activities and the annual Jewish fundraising appeal
which originated in 1935. El Paso also boasts a Jewish Family
and Children’s Service, housing for the elderly, and a Jewish
day school, El Paso Hebrew Academy, with grades 1–8. Each
of the congregations has a religious school for children and
there is a great deal of informal Jewish learning sponsored by
many of the local institutions. El Paso is home to a Holocaust
Museum and Study Center that serves the Jewish as well as
the non-Jewish community. A sizable collection of Judaica
was established in the library of the University of Texas at El
Paso by the family of the late Dr. Vincent Ravel.
By the 1960s, El Paso Jews were primarily merchants.
As in much of the United States, by the new millennium,
El Paso’s Jews were increasingly professionalized, including
lawyers and doctors, accountants, academics, businesspeople,
and others.
Bibliography: Broddy, in: Southwestern Studies, 3 (1965);
Freudenthal, ibid., no. 3; L.M. Friedman, Jewish Pioneers and Patriots
(1942), 367–74; F.S. Fierman, The Impact of the Frontier on a Jewish
Family: the Bibos (1961); idem, in: El Paso County Historical Society,
Password, 8 (1963), 43–54; idem, Some Early Jewish Settlers on
the Southwestern Frontier (1960); idem, in: aja, 16 (1964), 135–60;
W.V. D’Antonio and W.H. Form, Influentials in Two Border Cities: A
Study in Community Decision Making (1965); R. Segalman, “A Test
of the Lewinian Hypothesis on Self-Hatred Among the Jews” (Thesis,
N.Y. University, 1966).
[Ralph Segalman / Anne Schwartz Schaechner (2nd ed.)]
EL SALVADOR, republic of Central America; population,
6,704,932 (2005); Jewish population, 120.
El Salvador is one of the smallest communities in Latin
America. A few Crypto-Jews from Portugal passed through
El Salvador in colonial times. The recorded existence of Jews
in El Salvador dates back to the first half of the 19th century,
when some French-Sephardi Jews settled in the small town
of Chalchuapa. More French and German Jews, most of them
Alsatians, settled in the capital, San Salvador, during the second
half of the 19th century. Alfredo Widawer, arriving in 1909,
was the first to organize the services of the High Holidays.
East European and some Oriental Jews came during the 1920s
and a few German Jews arrived as a consequence of World
368 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6