JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

epstein, moses mordecai
Story Book: An Illustrated Anthology for Jewish Youth (1968),
More World Over Stories: An Illustrated Anthology for Jewish
Youth (1968), and All about Jewish Holidays and Customs
(1970).
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
EPSTEIN, MOSES MORDECAI (1866–1933), talmudist
and rosh yeshivah in Lithuania and Ereẓ Israel. Born in Bakst,
Moses studied in his youth at the Volozhin yeshivah where he
was known as the “illui (“prodigy”) of Bakst.” At Volozhin he
supported the Ḥovevei Zion group, founded by students of the
yeshivah and in 1891 was a member of a Ḥovevei Zion delegation,
which bought the land for the settlement of Ḥaderah. In
1893 he was appointed head of the Keneset Israel yeshivah of
Slobodka, a position he filled until his death. During World
War I he wandered from town to town in Russia at the head
of his yeshivah and after the war became one of the leaders
of religious Jewry in Lithuania and a cofounder of its rabbinical
council. In 1923 at the conference of the Agudat Israel
held in Vienna, he was elected a member of the Kenesiyyah
ha-Gedolah, the supreme body of the organization, and the
Mo’eẓet Gedolei ha-Torah, its rabbinical council, established
on that occasion. In 1924 he transferred most of the Keneset
Israel student body to their sister yeshivah in *Hebron, which
he had established. After the 1929 riots in Hebron in which
many of the students were killed, he moved the yeshivah to
Jerusalem. His method of studying Jewish law was to seek an
understanding of the structure of individual laws as a means of
comprehending the system of talmudic law in general. To this
end he made a special study of Maimonides, whose method
of halakhic commentary he sought to elucidate. In his teaching,
likewise, he stressed the understanding of the underlying
principles of individual laws more than expertise in wider
areas. Epstein’s method was adopted in numerous yeshivot.
A collection of his lectures, entitled Levush Mordekhai, was
published in four volumes: on tractate Bava Kamma (1901);
on Bava Meẓia (1929); on the four parts of the Shulḥan Arukh
(1946); and on Yevamot and Gittin (1948).
Bibliography: S.J. Zevin, Ishim ve-Shitot (19582), 275–91.
[David Tamar]
EPSTEIN, PAUL SOPHUS (1883–1966), theoretical physicist.
Epstein was born in Warsaw. After his studies in Russia
he went on to take a degree in optics in Germany. He left Russia
in 1919 and lectured for two years at the Technische Hochschule
in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1921 he went to the U.S. and
became a professor at the California Institute of Technology
at Pasadena. Epstein’s scientific output was very impressive,
and his studies covered wide fields which included applications
of the quantum theory (in a series of papers in the Berlin
periodical Zeitschrift fuer Physik), spectroscopy, radiation
pressure, Stark effect, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, theory
of elasticity, and earth magnetism. In 1937 he published a
Textbook of Thermodynamics.
[Arthur Beer]
EPSTEIN, SEYMOUR (1917– ), U.S. author. Epstein’s novels,
Pillar of Salt (1960), The Successor (1961), Leah (1964), and
Caught in that Music (1967), and his collection of short stories,
A Penny for Charity (1965), are mostly about first-generation
immigrants no longer bound by traditional commitments.
Perhaps his most powerful novel, Looking for Fred Schmidt,
was published in 1973.
EPSTEIN, ZALMAN (1860–1936), Hebrew essayist and
critic. Epstein was born in Luban, Belorussia, and he received
his early education at the Volozhin yeshivah. At the age of 16
he moved to Odessa where he lived for 30 years. He served
on the central committee of Ḥovevei Zion from 1890 to 1900
in Odessa. Later Epstein lived in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and
Moscow, and settled in Palestine in 1925. In 1879 he began to
publish letters and articles in the Hebrew press, some under
the pen-names of “Shelomo ha-Elkoshi” and “Ben Azzai.” His
article, “The Spirit of Nationalism and its Results in Modern
Times,” which appeared in Ha-Meliẓ in 1882, brought him a
measure of recognition. He became a regular contributor to
Ha-Meliẓ and later to Ha-Ẓefirah, Ha-Shilo’aḥ, and other journals,
writing primarily about Jewish problems, particularly the
settlement of Palestine and Zionism. He contributed a series of
articles in Yiddish to the St. Petersburg paper Der Tog. Epstein
also commented on Hebrew and general literature, and published
a number of poetic sketches, the best known of which
are the series Mi-Sefer ha-Zikhronot shel Shelomo ha-Elkoshi
(“From Shelomo ha-Elkoshi’s Book of Reminiscences”). In his
article “Ha-Sefer ve-ha-Ḥayyim” (“Books and Life”), in: Lu’aḥ
Aḥi’asaf, 1 (1894), he called upon Hebrew writers not to concern
themselves solely with Jewish problems. Epstein was a
romantic who respected and admired Jewish traditions and
sought to blend Judaism and humanism. He was the first to
publish articles in Hebrew on Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, and Turgenev
(in Ha-Boker Or, Ben-Ammi, and Ha-Zeman). His style
was biblical and ornate. Only a few of his hundreds of articles
and sketches were collected in the two volumes of his work,
one of which appeared in St. Petersburg in 1905, the other in
Tel Aviv in 1938. His monograph Moshe Leib Lilienblum was
published in 1935.
Bibliography: Autobiographical note in the preface to J.
Fichmann (ed.), Kitvei Zalman Epstein (1938).
[Gedalyah Elkoshi]
EPSTEIN HA-LEVI, MOSES JEHIEL (1890–1971), rabbi
and admor. Epstein was born in Ozarow, Poland, where he
received his rabbinic education. In 1913 he was appointed
rabbi there and in 1918 admor. Epstein immigrated to the
U.S. in 1927 and in 1953 came to Israel and settled in Tel
Aviv. He was a leader of Agudat Israel and a member of the
Mo’eẓet Gedolei ha-Torah and also active in educational and
charity affairs. His works are Esh Dat (11 vols.) and Be’er Moshe.
He was awarded the Israel Prize for rabbinical literature in
1968.
476 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6