JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

evans, robert
work as a designer and taught at the local YM/YWHA. She was
recruited from there to become the executive director of the
National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods for the *Union of
American Hebrew Congregations in 1951. She developed its
program on Jewish education and on world peace and through
the *World Union of Progressive Judaism expanded the work
of the NFTS overseas. She brought the energy and leadership
of the NFTS to the Jewish Braille Institute, whose board she
had joined in 1933, only two years after it was founded. Under
her leadership the Jewish Braille Institute provided resources
to the Jewish blind in 40 countries. She eventually
became president of the JBI in 1979, three years after her retirement
from the UAHC, until 1993 when at the spry age of
86 she stepped down.
A woman of great intellect, integrity, and energy, Evans
taught at the New School for Social Research in New York and
devoted herself to Jewish and philanthropic causes throughout
her long and active life. Widely known as a distinguished national
leader, a religious pacifist, and an advocate for human
rights, she was a founder and former president of the Jewish
Peace Fellowship and former president of the National Peace
Conference. She was awarded the Abraham Joshua Heschel
Award for peace work in the Jewish tradition. She served on
the Commission on Displaced Persons of the American Jewish
Conference after World War II.
Bibliography: K.M. Olitzsky, L.J. Sussman, and M.H. Stern,
Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook
(1993).
[Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)]
EVANS, ROBERT (1930– ), U.S. film producer and actor.
Born Robert Shapera in New York, Evans decided to become
an actor in elementary school, and at 12 was cast in Radio Mystery
Theater as a Nazi colonel. At 14 he was a regular talent
on the radio program Let’s Pretend. He changed his name to
Evans in middle school, and began to find roles on television.
He ventured out to Hollywood, but returned home to work in
his brother’s women’s clothing company, Evan Picone. By 25
he was a millionaire, and at 26 he was rediscovered at a Beverly
Hills hotel swimming pool and cast in the Lon Chaney biopic
The Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) as studio head Irving
*Thalberg opposite James Cagney. When the actors, writer,
and director disliked working with him on his next film, the
adaptation of Earnest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1957),
20th Century Fox producer Darryl *Zanuck paid a visit to the
Mexican set and said, “The kid stays in the picture. And anybody
who doesn’t like it can quit!” Evans was inspired by Zanuck’s
power and decided he wanted to become a producer. He
was hired by 20th Century Fox but left Fox before ever making
a picture. Tycoon Charles Bludhorn made Evans an offer he
couldn’t refuse, putting him in charge of Paramount Pictures.
Under his leadership, Paramount had a string of hits: The Odd
Couple (1968), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Goodbye, Columbus
(1969), Love Story (1970), and The Godfather (1972), which
won the Academy Award for best picture. Evans became en-
amored of actress Ali MacGraw; the couple married in 1969,
and had a son, Joshua, before divorcing in 1972 (she left him
for Steve McQueen whom she had met on the set of the Evans
production The Getaway). Evans left Paramount to produce
his own films, most notably Chinatown (1974), Marathon
Man (1976), Black Sunday (1977), and Urban Cowboy (1980).
Drug abuse, drug charges, and other scandals as well as two
box-office bombs, The Cotton Club (1984) and The Two Jakes
(1990), sunk his career. Broke but unbowed, Evans wrote his
memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture in 1994, which became a
bestseller and a cult favorite audio classic, later adopted by the
Library of Congress. Evans was rewarded by a renewed deal
at Paramount Studios. In 2003, he provided the voice for an
animated cartoon, Kid Notorious, based on his exploits. Later
film projects include producing the film How to Lose a Guy
in 10 Days (2003).
[Adam Wills (2nd ed.)]
EVE (Heb. הָ ּוַח, Ḥavvah), the first woman, wife of *Adam, and
mother of the human race. After Adam had reviewed and assigned
names to the animals, but had not found a suitable
mate among them, God put him to sleep, removed one of his
ribs, and formed it into a woman. Adam immediately recognized
this being as an integral part of himself, his own bone
and flesh, and called her “Woman” (Heb. ‘ishah) because she
was taken “from Man” (Heb. ‘ish). (Unlike the two English
words, the Hebrew ones are completely unrelated etymologically,
despite their outward resemblance.) For this reason, a
man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife so that
two become one (Gen. 2:23–24).
It was the woman whom the serpent induced to eat the
forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,
and she in turn gave some to her husband to eat. It brought
them intellectual maturity (some say also sexual awareness,
but this was more likely born with the first recognition of
physical kinship; see above), and earned for the woman the
pain of childbirth and subjection to her husband, and for the
man drudgery. After this incident, Adam named his wife Eve
Ḥavvah because she was “the Mother of all Living” (Gen. 3:20),
an epithet with strong mythical overtones suggesting that Eve
was originally a goddess who was demythologized by the biblical
writer. The Greek translates the name as Zōē (“life”), in
keeping with the wordplay. Rabbinic exegesis, however, connected
the name with Aramaic ḥewyā (“serpent”), and observed
that the serpent was her undoing and that she was her
husband’s “serpent.” This etymology has been revived in recent
times by the connection of the name with a ḥwt, probably
Hawwat, a Phoenician deity attested in a stela from Carthage
in North Africa, and on urns from Cagliari in Italy.
That she was a serpent-goddess is based only on the Aramaic
etymology.
In biblical Hebrew (Job 18:12) şēlāʿ is an epithet meaning
“wife.” Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib or side (Heb. şēlāʿ)
provides the epithet with an etiology. The Sumerian Paradise
Myth of Enki and Ninhŭrsag provides another possible side-
572 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6