JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Engel, Eliot L.
(2) Settlement in the Judean Desert on the west bank of
the Dead Sea, founded by Israeli-born youth first as a *Naḥal
military outpost in 1953 and later in 1956 as a civilian kibbutz
affiliated to the Iḥud ha-Kevuẓot ve-ha-Kibbutzim. Its
primary functions were, initially, those of defense; but it also
successfully developed farming methods adapted to the local
conditions of a hot desert climate and an abundance of fresh
water from the En-Gedi Springs. These are fed by an underground
flow (from the rain-rich intake area on the western
slopes of the Hebron Hills), which emerges on a fault line.
An area surrounding the Springs has been declared a nature
reserve because of the small enclave of Sudano-Deccanian
flora existing there. A field school of the Society for the
Preservation of Nature, a youth hostel (Bet Sara), and a recreation
home are all situated there. Until 1967 the means of
transportation to En-Gedi were by land or sea from Sodom,
on the south side of the Dead Sea. In 1962 a narrow asphalt
road was built and it replaced the 50 km. dirt road that was
frequently destroyed by flash floods in the winter months. At
that time there was a motorboat that sailed from Sodom to
En-Gedi, and a medical doctor used to arrive once a week by
light plane (Piper) from Beer Sheva. In 1971 an asphalt road
was built northwards and connected En-Gedi to Jerusalem,
shortening the travel time from En-Gedi to Tel Aviv, from 5
to 2 hours. The kibbutz economy was based mainly on tourism,
including a guest house and medicinal waters. Farming
was based on mango plantations, date palms, and herbs. The
kibbutz had a 25-acre botanical garden with 900 plant species
from all over the world. In 2002 the population of En-
Gedi was 603.
[Efraim Orni / Shaked Gilboa and Gideon Hadas (2nd ed.)]
Bibliography: B. Mazar et al., En-Gedi, Ḥafirot… (1963);
B. Mazar, in: BIES, 30 (1966), 183ff.; idem, in: Archaeology, 16 (1963),
99ff.; idem, in: Archaeology and Old Testament Study, ed. by D. Winton
Thomas (1967), 223ff.; idem, in: IEJ, 14 (1964), 121–30; 17 (1967),
133–43; Y. Aharoni, in: Atiqot, 5 (1961–62), En-Gedi; ibid., 3 (1961),
148–62; idem, in: IEJ, 12 (1962), 186–99; B. Mazar, S. Lieberman, and
E.E. Urbach, in: Tarbiz, 40 (Oct. 1970), 18–30. Add. Bibliography:
G. Hadas, “Stone Anchors,” in: Atiqot, 21 (1992), 55–57; idem,
“Nine Tombs,” in: Atiqot, 24 (Hebrew; 1994); idem, “Water Mills,” in:
BAIAS, 19–20 (2001–2), 71–93; idem, “Ancient Irrigation Agriculture
in the Oasis of Ein Gedi” (Doctoral Thesis, 2002); idem, “Excavations
by the Synagogue,” in: Atiqot, 49 (in press); G. Hadas et al., “Two Ancient
Wooden Anchors,” in: JNA, 34:2 (2005), 307–15; Y. Hirschfeld,
Excavations (forthcoming).
ENGEL, ELIOT L. (1947– ), U.S. congressman. Engel was
born and raised in New York. His family lived in a third floor
Bronx tenement and around the time of his bar mitzvah
moved to middle-class public housing. During the summers
of his teenage years, he worked as an actor. In 1969, he graduated
from Hunter-Lehman College with a B.A. in history
and received a master’s degree in guidance and counseling in
1973 from Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University
of New York. In 1987, he received a law degree from New York
Law School. After graduation from college he was a teacher
and guidance counselor in the New York school system before
entering politics.
He began his political career as a member of the New
York Assembly (1977–88) where he chaired the Committee
on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse as well as the Subcommittee
on Mitchell-Lama Housing. After six terms in the Assembly,
he challenged ten-term incumbent Mario Biaggi, who
had been convicted of bribery and extortion. He beat him in
a Democratic primary, which was paramount to election in
the district. He served in Congress from 1989. In Congress
he was a member of the Energy Committee and a member of
the International Relations Committee. In typical New York
fashion he pursued the three I’s strategy: Israel, Ireland, and
Italy. He was outspoken in his defense of Israel, and a prime
mover of the bill to move the American Embassy from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem. He also pressed the issue of American participation
in Bosnia during the crisis of the mid-1990s. Engel
was a member of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus,
the Democratic Study Group on Health, and the Long Island
Sound Caucus. He co-chaired the Albanian Issues Caucus and
was an Executive Board Member of the Congressional Ad Hoc
Committee on Irish Affairs.
Bibliography: L.S. Maisel and I. Forman, Jews in American
Politics (2001); K.F. Stone, The Congressional Minyan: The Jews
of Capitol Hill (2002).
[Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)]
ENGEL, JOEL (Yuli Dimitriyevich; 1868–1927), composer
and music editor, a pioneer of music in Ereẓ Israel. Born in
Berdyansk, Russia, he studied at Kharkov and the Moscow
Conservatory. He was music critic of the journal Russkiye
Vedomosti for 20 years and in 1911 he published a collection
of criticism, At the Opera. The turning point in Engel’s work
came in 1900, when he began to adapt Jewish folk songs and
to organize concerts for their performance. His activity attracted
young Jewish musicians and the Society for Jewish
Folk Music was founded in 1908. In 1912 Engel took part with
S. *An-Ski in an ethnographical expedition to South Russia,
and collected many folk songs among the Jewish population.
Engel found in the Ḥasidic wordless niggunim manifestations
of an original Hebrew melos. He believed that folk songs sung
for years by the Jewish people, even though containing alien
elements, reflected the Jewish spirit. He applied this idea in
his most important composition, the music to An-Ski’s play
The Dybbuk (published as a suite for orchestra, 1926). He also
set Hebrew poems of *Bialik and *Tchernichowsky to music.
In 1924 he settled in Tel Aviv and devoted himself to the
creation of original Hebrew-Palestinian songs. His music for
Peretz’s works was performed at the Peretz Festival in the
Ohel Theater in 1926. He also wrote children’s songs. In 1916
in Moscow he published Fifty Children’s Songs (in Yiddish).
More songs appeared in the booklets Yaldei Sadeh (1923) and
Shirei Yeladim, and in a posthumous collection Be-Keren Za-
408 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6