JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

1916 went to Europe as a secretary of the American Jewish Relief
Committee. In Palestine in 1919, he was inspector of Jewish
schools and taught at David *Yellin’s Teachers’ Seminary
in Jerusalem. Returning to the United States, Dushkin was
appointed secretary of *Keren Hayesod (1921–22). From 1923
to 1934 he was director of Chicago’s Board of Jewish Education
and founded that city’s College of Jewish Studies (1924).
In 1934 he was called by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
to organize and conduct its Department of Education (since
1952, the School of Education). He was lecturer in educational
methods and administration and also the principal of Bet ha-
Kerem High School, Jerusalem (1934–39). Upon his return to
the United States he became executive director of the Jewish
Education Committee in New York City (1939–49). In 1949
Dushkin was invited by the Hebrew University to establish
and direct its undergraduate studies and to teach education
and education administration. From 1962, he headed the Department
of Jewish Education in the Diaspora in the Hebrew
University Institute of Contemporary Jewry. Dushkin wrote
the first doctoral dissertation on a Jewish educational theme
(Columbia University, 1917), Jewish Education in New York
City (1918), and was the editor of the first educational journal
in English in the United States, The Jewish Teacher (1916–19);
edited and co-edited its successor, Jewish Education (1929–35,
1939–49); was coauthor of Jewish Education in the United
States (1959); edited the third volume of the Enẓyklopedyah
Ḥinnukhit (“Educational Encyclopedia”); and wrote many
monographs and articles. In his educational philosophy Dushkin
recognized the validity of pluralism in American Jewish
education, but saw its bases in common elements and values.
He saw Jewish education in the Diaspora as being one of the
main responsibilities of Jewish communal efforts. As a student
of Kilpatrick and disciple of the progressivist concepts,
he strove to base education on science and experience; he
had, however, a positive attitude to Jewish tradition, seeing it
as the unique force in the preservation of the Jewish people.
Dushkin was awarded an Israel Prize in 1968.
Bibliography: J. Pilch and M. Ben-Horin, Judaism and the
Jewish School (1966), 60f.
[Nathan Greenbaum and Leon H. Spotts]
DUSHKIN, SAMUEL (1891–1976), violinist. Dushkin was
born in Suwalki, Poland, and studied with Guillaume Remy
(violin) and Ganaye (composition) at the Paris Conservatoire,
and with *Amar and *Kreisler in New York. After his Paris
début in 1918, he toured widely and gave many important first
performances, notably of Ravel’s Tzigane (Amsterdam, 1925)
and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (Berlin, 1931). Stravinsky,
who composed it with technical advice from Dushkin, often
accompanied him in it at subsequent performances. Dushkin
also collaborated with Stravinsky in making transcriptions
from Pulcinella and Le baiser de la fée and recorded the Duo
concertant with him. He gave the first performances of a considerable
amount of chamber music by Prokofiev, *Milhaud,
dustan
Poulenc, and others. Dushkin edited, and in some cases transcribed,
virtuoso music for the violin. Some are in fact his own
compositions attributed to earlier composers, such as Johann
Benda and Boccherini. He also published teaching manuals
for the violin.
Add. Bibliography: Grove online; MGG2; R. Ellero, Le Composizioni
Violinistiche di Stravinskij per Dushkin, Tesi di laurea Univ.
degli Studi di Venezia (1991/2).
[Max Loppert / Israela Stein (2nd ed.)]
DUSHMAN, SAUL (1883–1954), U.S. chemist and physicist.
Dushman was born in Rostov, Russia, and was taken to Canada
as a child of nine. He obtained a doctorate at the University
of Toronto in 1912 and in the same year joined the General
Electric Company Laboratory at Schenectady, N.Y., where
he worked for 40 years, from 1928 as assistant director. For a
period he was also director of research at the Edison Lamp
Works. Dushman’s published books and papers were mainly
concerned with the development and use of high vacuum
with which his name is firmly associated. He introduced,
with Langmuir, the suffix -tron for equipment in which high
vacuum was used; later the suffix was used in words such as
cyclotron, magnetron, etc. His books included High Vacuum
(1923), The Elements of Quantum Mechanics (1938), Scientific
Foundations of Vacuum Technique (1949), and Fundamentals
of Atomic Physics (1951).
Bibliography: Langmuir, in: Vacuum, 3 (1953–54), 113f.
[Samuel Aaron Miller]
DUSTAN (al-Dustān; Dositheans), Samaritan sect (or sects),
followers of Dusis or Dustis, which is probably the Aramaic
form of the Greek name Dositheos. In a somewhat different
form – Dosa or Dostai – it is quite common in Jewish sources
such as Mishnah, Tosefta, and Midrash. A Dostai and a Sabbai
are mentioned in the Midrash as the priests sent by the Assyrian
king to Samaria to teach the new settlers the laws and customs
of the country. In a legend told by Josephus about a religious
dispute between Jews and Samaritans before Ptolemy IV
Philometer, Samaritan representatives are called Sabbeus and
Theodosius (Theodosius being another form of Dositheos).
But in all probability there is no connection between these
and the founder of the Dosithean sect. Information about
this sect is found in the Samaritan Chronicles and in patristic
and Islamic writings. The relation between this sect and the
11th-century C.E. al-Dustan of the Samaritan liturgy has not
yet been clarified. The accounts about the Dosithean sect (or
sects) differ in many ways and contradict each other in some
places. The Samaritan sources, the Annals of *Abu al-Fatḥ and
the New Chronicle, speak of two sects: one called al-Dustān,
which arose shortly before the time of Alexander the Great,
i.e., in the fourth century B.C.E., and a sect mentioned in the
Tolidah as founded by Dūsis or Dustis in the days of the high
priest Akbon, the brother of *Baba Rabbah, i.e., in the second
half of the fourth century C.E. Patristic sources from the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 65