JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ERRERA, LÉO (1858–1905), Belgian botanist and Jewish
leader. Errera studied in Brussels, Strasbourg, and at the Botanical
Institute of Wuerzburg. In 1884 he was appointed lecturer
at the University of Brussels (professor, 1895), where he
founded the Botanical Institute in 1891. In 1898 he was elected
to the Royal Academy of Belgium. Errera’s research included
discovery of glycogen as the reserve carbohydrate of fungi,
studies on the role of alkaloids in plants, and pioneer studies
on the physical laws governing the shape of cells. His collected
works were published in five volumes between 1908 and 1922.
Errera was prominent in local and international Jewish activities.
He was connected with the Alliance Israélite Universelle
and he participated in many international conferences on
Jewish questions. In 1893 he published a pamphlet protesting
the persecution of Russian Jews, Les Juifs russes: extermination
ou émancipation (English ed. 1894; German ed., together
with the author’s study on the Kishinev pogrom, 1903). His
brother was Paul Joseph *Errera.
Bibliography: Massart, in: Annuaire de la Société Royale
des Sciences naturelles et médicales de Bruxelles (1905); Fredericq
and Mossart, in: Annuaire de l’Académie Royale de Belgique (1908),
131–279; A. Errera, in: Commemoration Léo Errera, ed. by Université
libre de Bruxelles (1960), 17–37 (includes bibliography); Pelseneer,
in: Bulletin de la Société Royale de Botanique de Belgique, 92
(1960), 269–70.
ERRERA, PAUL JOSEPH (1860–1922), Belgian jurist. Born
in Brussels, son of the banker Jacques Errera, Paul Errera became
professor of constitutional law at Brussels, was rector of
the university from 1908 to 1911, and its administrative vice
president in 1919. He was a member of the Royal Academy of
Belgium. Errera published several works on Belgian law, including
Les Masuirs (1891), Les Warechaix (1894), and Traité de
Droit publie belge (19182). He was active in Jewish affairs and a
member of both the Jewish Colonization Association and the
central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.
[Rose Bieber]
ERTER, ISAAC (1791–1851), Hebrew satirist of the Haskalah.
Born in Koniuszek near Przemysl, Erter, during the earlier
part of his life, lived in various places including Lvov, where
he, together with a group of young maskilim, was excommunicated
in 1816 by Rabbi Jacob Ornstein; Budapest, where he
studied medicine (1825–29); and Brody, then an important
commercial and cultural center for Galician Jewry, where he
settled in 1831 and remained for the rest of his life. In addition
to his literary work, Erter was also active communally
among Haskalah circles, showing special interest in the plans
for a reform of contemporary Jewish society. Toward the end
of his life, he collaborated with his friend Y.H. *Schorr in the
early stages of the founding of He-Ḥalutz, a Hebrew periodical
dedicated to the study of Judaica in the spirit of religious
reform, and distinguished by a boldly critical treatment of
problems relating to Jewish tradition.
erter, isaac
Erter’s only book, Ha-Ẓofeh le-Veit Yisrael (“The Watchman
of the House of Israel,” 1858), consists of five satires, all
of which had been published separately (between 1823 and
1851) with the addition of some personal correspondence
relevant to his literary career. Noteworthy among the satires
are the following: Ḥasidut ve-Ḥokhmah (“Ḥasidism and Wisdom”),
Tashlikh (the ceremony of symbolically casting one’s
sins into the water on Rosh Ha-Shanah), and Gilgul Nefesh
(“Transmigration of the Soul”). Written in the form of epistles,
several of the satires seem to have been modeled on the
work of Lucian, the second-century Greek satirist, whose
writings were very popular in European Rationalist literature
and which Erter came to know in Wieland’s German translation.
Lucian’s satiric and ironic treatment of Greek mythology
and of ignorant and boorish antiquity during its decline was
adapted by Erter in his fight against the traditionalist Jewish
society of his day. The recurring character – a type of “persona
satirae” – “the watchman of the House of Israel,” has its
source in the prophet-castigator of Ezekiel 3:17 (whence also
the title); by virtue of the authority of the biblical figure, Erter’s
watchman reviews the reality of Jewish society in Galicia
and Poland in the first half of the 19th century. In this narrative,
written in an autobiographical manner, the “observer”
gathers evidence and confronts the reader with confessions
of figures belonging to an imaginary, fanciful world, confessions
made in a dream state or after death. Having endowed
them with a keen rhetoric ability, Erter enables these figures
to explain their character and experience by ironic exaggeration,
coupled with the idealistic pathos characteristic of the
Haskalah movement.
The subjects treated in the satires are the hypocrisy, ignorance,
and superstition, which in Erter’s view characterize
the world of Ḥasidism; the rabbis, who are accused of pedantry,
pursuit of personal glory, and literary plagiarism; and
the leaders of the Jewish community, condemned for their
corruption. The irony is likewise directed, although to a lesser
extent, at the maskilim, who ignore the plight of their brethren,
and at Erter’s colleagues, the physicians, who abuse their
profession out of either ignorance or the pursuit of gain and
glory. These facts are presented in an extremely satiric form
with Erter’s frequent use of not only conventional personifications
of human qualities, in the tradition of satirical allegory,
but also demonic figures drawn from the Jewish legends, such
as angels, Samael, and reincarnated souls. The satirist pretends
to be an objective reporter of empirical facts who, in his experimental
approach, employs such satiric devices as scales
which expose the true value of human qualities, nets which
catch the sins of persons regarded by all as above reproach,
and the cynical confessions of deceased sinners. He even has
recourse to the pseudo-magical devices of a miraculous shortening
of a journey and instantaneous flight to distant places
so as to keep track of events in all areas of Jewish sojourn. The
number of observations made is basic to his method, for in
describing as many facets as possible of Jewish life which to
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 483