JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ettenberg, sylvia cutler
“Popular Studies in Judaism” program. He also served as president
of the Hebrew Union College Alumni Association and
was a member of the HUC Board of Governors as well as of
the Executive Board of the Central Conference of American
Rabbis (1912). A frequent contributor to Jewish literary periodicals
and a translator of poetry into Hebrew and Yiddish,
he also wrote the book, The Integrity of I Maccabees (1925),
and published a translation of the epigrams of Shem Tov ben
Joseph *Falaquera, a 13th-century Jewish scholar and physician
from Spain.
Bibliography: Journal of the 87th Annual Convention of the
Central Conference of American Rabbis (1976).
[Bezalel Gordon (2nd ed.)]
ETTENBERG, SYLVIA CUTLER (1917– ), U.S. Jewish educator,
particularly within the Conservative movement. Born
in Brooklyn, she received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and a
Bachelor of Pedagogy from the Jewish Theological Seminary
of America (JTS). In 1940 she married Moshe Ettenberg, an
engineering professor; the couple had two children.
Although her career was spent almost exclusively at the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, her influence was
felt in a wide range of institutions and settings. Ettenberg, the
first female senior administrator at JTS, played a leading role in
some of the most important and innovative projects of Conservative
Jewish education. She was directly involved in the
founding of the Seminary’s supplementary high school (the
Prozdor) in 1951, the creation of the Melton Research Center
in 1959, and the eventual establishment of the William Davidson
Graduate School of Jewish Education in 1996. She worked
on the creation of a joint undergraduate degree program between
JTS and Columbia University and helped supervise the
Department of Jewish Education at the Seminary as it developed
its M.A. and doctoral programs.
Arguably, her most notable achievement was Camp Ramah,
a summer educational camping program that grew into
an international network of camps. Ramah was first launched
in Wisconsin in 1947 by a group of community leaders from
Chicago. But it was Ettenberg and Moshe Davis who brought
Ramah inside the world of JTS itself, creating an infrastructure
for the camping system that developed over time and nurtured
the powerful educational vision embodied in the camps. The
Ramah camps had a profound impact on Jewish education and
provided a large percentage of the future academic, lay, and
professional leadership of Conservative Judaism.
Ettenberg received an honorary doctorate from JTS, the
Behrman House Books – Jewish Educators Assembly lifetime
achievement award, and the Samuel Rothberg Prize in Jewish
education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
[Barry W. Holtz (2nd ed.)]
ETTENDORF, township in the Bas-Rhin department, France.
Two Jewish families were recorded in the town in 1449. In 1784
the Jewish population of Ettendorf reached its peak of 124, but
from the Revolution, it steadily declined; there were 37 Jews
there in 1868 and only one family in 1926. The Ettendorf community,
though small, possessed two important institutions,
which also served about 20 other communities in Lower Alsace:
a cemetery opened during the late 15th century and a talmudical
school established in the middle of the 18th century.
Bibliography: D. Fischer, Ein geschichtlicher Blick auf… Ettendorf
(1868); U. Ginsburg, in: Souvenir et Science, 2:1 (1931), 14ff.
[Bernhard Blumenkranz]
ETTING, pioneer Jewish family in Baltimore, Maryland.
ELIJAH ETTING (1724–1778), progenitor of the family in the
U.S., arrived in the U.S. from Germany in 1758, settling in York,
Pennsylvania, where he became an important Indian trader.
After his death his widow, SHINAH (née Solomon), moved
to Baltimore with five of her seven children. Her two sons
Reuben and Solomon also settled there eventually. REUBEN
ETTING (1762–1848), Maryland political figure, was born in
York, Pa. During a period when Jews still lived in Maryland
by license rather than by right, Reuben assumed the duties of
a full citizen in 1798 when a war between the United States
and France seemed imminent and became captain of a militia
company. Reuben was long involved in politics as a Jeffersonian
Republican and was appointed U.S. marshal for
Maryland in 1801 by President Jefferson. He was thus the first
Jew in Maryland to hold public office, a quarter of a century
before the Jews gained civic equality in the state. SOLOMON
ETTING (1764–1847), businessman, political figure, and Jewish
civic rights leader, also born in York, Pa., became a shoḥet
at the age of 18, the first American Jew to serve in this capacity.
At first a hardware storekeeper, Solomon subsequently became
a banker, a shipper, a founder of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, and an important businessman. He was prominent
in the Baltimore Republican Society, a Jeffersonian political
club. He was a leader in the defense of Baltimore against the
British in the War of 1812, during which his 18-year-old son
Samuel was wounded in the battle at nearby Fort McHenry.
Etting was a “manager” of the Maryland State Colonization
Society, which sought to promote the resettlement of blacks
in Africa. Etting was active in the Baltimore German Society
and served as its vice president from 1820 to 1840. Although
he was not involved in any Jewish organization in Baltimore,
he supported the synagogue of his youth, Mikveh Israel, in
Philadelphia. In 1801 he purchased land for a Jewish cemetery
in Baltimore. He also led in the struggle for Jewish civic
rights, opposing the Maryland law requiring of officeholders
a Christian oath. As early as 1797 he appealed to the State Legislature
on behalf of a “sect of people called Jews, deprived of
invaluable rights of citizenship and praying to be placed on the
same footing as other good citizens.” This petition initiated a
three-decade struggle, which ended successfully in 1826. Soon
thereafter, Etting served as a Baltimore councilman. Solomon
Etting’s second wife was the daughter of the prominent leader
Barnard *Gratz.
Bibliography: Rosenbloom, Biog Dict, 35–36; AJHS, 2
(1894), 33–44; 17 (1909), 81–88; 34 (1937), 66–69; Baroway, in: Mary-
542 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6