JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ESPINOZA, ENRIQUE (pseudonym of Samuel Glusberg;
1898–1987), Argentine author, publisher, and, journalist. His
pseudonym combines the names of Henrich Heine and Baruch
Spinoza. Born in Kishinev, Espinoza arrived in Argentina
at the age of seven. He founded and edited the literary
reviews Cuadernos Americanos (1919) and Babel (1921–51), first
in Buenos Aires and later in Santiago de Chile, where he settled
in 1935 for health and political reasons, and also founded
the Babel publishing house, which launched books by new
Argentinian writers. In 1945 he conducted a symposium on
“the Jewish Question” among prominent Latin American intellectuals,
published in Babel 26. He was co-founder and first
secretary of the Argentine Writers’ Association, and a member
of avant-garde movements in literature and the arts. His
short stories and articles deal with Jewish identity, immigration,
antisemitism, and the Holocaust, as well as ethical and
universal social issues. His contemporaries saw him as the perfect
intellectual blend of cosmopolitanism and Jewishness. His
best-known stories appeared in La levita gris: cuentos judíos de
ambiente porteño (1924); and Ruth y Noemí (1934). His essays
were collected in De un lado y otro (1956), Heine, el ángel y el
león (1953), and Spinoza, ángel y paloma (1978).
Bibliography: R. Gardiol, Argentina’s Jewish Short Story
Writers (1986); N. Lindstrom, Jewish Issues in Argentine Literature
(1989); D.B. Lockhart, Jewish Writers of Latin America. A Dictionary
(1997).
[Florinda Goldberg (2nd ed.)]
ESRA, organization founded January 26, 1884, with its headquarters
in Berlin and its major objective to support Jewish
agricultural settlers in Ereẓ Israel and Syria without the traditional
*Ḥalukkah system. At the end of 1886 a group of young
Berlin Jews produced a manifesto prompted by the movement
of Russian Jews to Ereẓ Israel to establish agricultural settlements,
proclaiming: “These Russian Jews, who have been continually
tortured and persecuted, were able to initiate this excellent
project out of their intense need. Shall German Jewry,
which enjoys the full protection of an impartial government,
stand idly by and merely watch their efforts? We, who have
had intellectual hegemony since the days of Mendelssohn,
stand ashamed before Russian Jewry.” The founding assembly
of the Verein zur Unterstuetzung ackerbautreibender
Juden in Palaestina und Syrien (“Association for the Support
of Jewish Farmers in Palestine and Syria”) took place in Berlin
in 1884. Its early leaders were Willy *Bambus and Hirsch
*Hildesheimer, the son of Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer, who
coopted the Orthodox camp into the organization. At its
peak, the leaders of the organization included Otto *Warburg
and Eugen *Mittwoch. The association, which had branches
throughout Germany, published the newspapers Serubabel
and *Selbstemanzipation, pamphlets about agricultural settlement
by Bambus, and the periodical, Zion. In 1891, the
association succeeded in forming an umbrella organization
for all European associations supporting settlement in Ereẓ
Israel. Esra supported individual settlers in almost all agricul-
essen
tural villages, devoting special attention to the Qastina settlement
(later Be’er Toviyyah), the Benei Yehudah colony in the
Golan, Yemenite immigrants, and educational projects. When
political Zionism gained momentum, the association emphasized
the value of practical settlement in Palestine, while
opposing Zionist political activity. Even at the end of World
War I, it stated firmly that despite the “Charter” (i.e, the Balfour
Declaration, to which they would not refer by name),
supreme value must still be attached to settlement, without
which there is no real basis for “national rights.” Since the
Zionist organization now began its large-scale settlement
projects (inter alia, in the Jezreel Valley), the activities of
Esra became superfluous. The association disappeared in the
early 1920s.
Bibliography: Esra, Festschrift zum 25-jaehrigen Jubilaeum
(1909); 35 Jahre Verein Esra (1919). Add. Bibliography: J. Reinharz,
“The Esra Verein and Jewish Colonization in Palestine,” in:
LBIYB, 24 (1979), 261–90.
[Getzel Kressel / Bjoern Siegel (2nd ed.)]
ESSELIN, ALTER (Artur Eselin; pseudonym of Ore Serebrenik;
1889–1974), Yiddish poet. Born in Chernigov, Ukraine,
Esselin immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 16, worked as a
carpenter in various cities, and settled in 1925 in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. His first poems appeared in 1919 in local Yiddish
newspapers (Der Veg, Detroit; Kundes, New York). In a few
years, he received significant literary recognition. His poetry
volumes, Knoytn (“Candlewicks,” 1927), Unter der Last (“Under
the Yoke,” 1936), and Lider fun a Midbernik (“Poems of a
Hermit,” 1954), are marked by their sadness. He often laments
his lonely vigil far from Yiddish centers and voices his pride
that he earns his living with saw and hammer. Death is a frequent
theme, and in a poetic epitaph he describes himself as
a poet who poisoned himself with songs in which honey and
arsenic were mixed. A selection of his poems, translated into
English, with an introduction by his son, Joseph Esselin, appeared
in 1968.
Bibliography: Y. Bronshteyn, Fun Eygn Hoyz (1963), 267–74.
Add. Bibliography: LNYL, 7 (1968), 9–10.
[Sol Liptzin / Eliezer Niborski (2nd ed.)]
ESSEN (in Jewish sources: אסע), city in North Rhine-Westphalia,
Germany. Jews are first mentioned there in the 13th
century. During the *Black Death (1349) they were expelled
from the city, but subsequently allowed to return. Jews are
mentioned in a list of taxpayers of 1399. Between 1545 and 1578
there were no Jews in Essen. The first municipal law concerning
the trades open to Jews was passed in 1598. Jurisdiction
over Essen Jewry was disputed between the monastery and the
municipality during the period 1662 to 1686. Although there
were only seven Jews living in Essen in 1652 and 13 in 1791, a
synagogue was built there in 1683 and a cemetery consecrated
in 1716. Several Jewish physicians were living in Essen in this
period. With the city’s expansion in the mid-19th century the
number of Jews rose from 19 in 1805 to 750 in 1869.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 509