JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

arth, karl
His son, AHARON (1890–1957), was an Israeli banker and
Zionist leader. Born in Berlin, as a young man he became an
active leader in the Mizrachi movement in Germany, representing
it at most of the Zionist Congresses after 1920. From
1921 to 1938 he served as attorney for the Zionist Congress
court, and from 1946 as its chairman. He settled in Palestine
in 1933 and was appointed director-general of the Anglo-Palestine
Bank (later Bank Leumi le-Israel) in 1947, retaining this
post until his death. Of his articles and brochures on various
Zionist and religious topics, the most important is Dorenu mul
She’elot ha-Neẓaḥ published in 1954 and republished in 1955
(Eng. tr. The Modern Jew Faces Eternal Problems, Jerusalem
1956). In it, he summarized his views on traditional and modern
aspects of Judaism. He is noted for his modern religious
interpretation of Orthodoxy, stressing the contemporary relevance
of Orthodox Jewish practice. He wrote the brochure
Letter to an English Friend (1948), in which he propounds the
religious basis for the Jewish claim to Palestine, and The Mitzvoth:
Their Aim and Purpose (1949).
ELIEZER (LAZAR) (1880–1949), Aharon’s elder brother,
was a leader and central figure in the religious Zionist movement
in Germany. Born in Berlin, he became a leader of the
Zionist Organization of Germany, participated in most Zionist
Congresses after 1903, and served as a member of the Zionist
General Council. During 1929–31 he represented Mizrachi on
the Zionist Executive in London. He published numerous articles
on Zionist topics.
[Benjamin Jaffe]
Bibliography: Rabbiner-Seminar zu Berlin, Bericht ueber
die ersten 25 Jahre (1898), 9, 57; Eppenstein, in: Jahresbericht des
Rabbiner Seminars zu Berlin fuer 1914–5 (1915), 91–99; C.H. Becker,
Der Islam (1916), 200–2; J. Fueck, Die arabischen Studien in Europa
(1955), 242–3; EJ, 3 (1929), 1100–01; J. Blau, in: Ḥokhmat Yisrael be-
Ma’arav Eiropah, ed. by S. Federbush (1959), 47–52; EẓD, 1 (1958),
227–33; S. Daniel, in: Gevilin be-Maḥashavah Datit Le’ummit (July
1957), 58–72.
°BARTH, KARL (1886–1968), Swiss Protestant theologian.
From 1922, he served as professor of theology in various German
universities. With the Nazi rise to power in Germany and
the consequent split in German Protestantism, Barth helped
to found the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) which
opposed Hitler and the National-Socialist ideology as incompatible
with Christian commitment to the teaching and kingship
of Jesus. In 1934, he drafted the theological declaration
of Barmen, whereby the German Lutherans and Reformed
united to define and defend their position against the totalitarian
claims of the state. Expelled from Germany in 1935, he
returned to his native Basle, where he was appointed professor
of dogmatics.
His principal theological work, the monumental Kirchliche
Dogmatik, which remained incomplete at his death, was
published between 1932–53. While Barth took a courageous
stand against antisemitism, seeing in hatred and persecution
of the Jews an attack on the very foundations of the Christian
message, his work evinces no understanding of actual Juda-
ism. Throughout Barth’s writings Judaism appears as a theoretical
construction, a kind of figment of theological imagination,
whose purpose it is to serve as a foil to the message
of the gospel.
While not hostile in its intention, Barth’s representation
of Judaism is a complete caricature and falsification of Jewish
reality. According to Barth, Israel is God’s Chosen People and
in spite of its obstinacy in assimilating to other peoples, the
Divine election remains valid. Since the crucifixion of Jesus,
there simply cannot be any normal existence for the Jewish
people, for the Jew represents man as such, sinner, called by
God’s grace and rejecting this grace. In this exemplary role of
man, the Jew necessarily irritates the nations of the world by
acting as a kind of mirror in which the nations see their sinful
humanity reflected. The Nazis sought to destroy the Jews,
the people of Jesus, in order to liberate themselves from the
rule of God and to break, as it were, the mirror in which fallen
man sees himself reflected. Beside his numerous theological,
literary, and political writings, Barth also wrote some works on
the church in the Third Reich, and on the existence of Christians
in the countries under communist rule.
Bibliography: W. Pauck, Karl Barth (Eng., 1931); Taubes, in:
JR, 34 (1954), 14, 231–43; R. Niebuhr, Essays in Applied Christianity
(1959); F.W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums fuer die christliche
Theologie – Israel im Denken Karl Barths (1967).
BARTHOLDY, JACOB (1779–1825), Prussian diplomat and
art connoisseur. Born in Berlin into a prosperous Jewish family
as Jacob Salomon, he was an uncle of the composer Felix
Mendelssohn. He converted in 1805 and adopted the family
name Bartholdy from a rented estate near Berlin. He was one
of the group of gifted apostate Jews whose services were enlisted
by von Hardenberg, the Prussian chancellor. Bartholdy
studied law and philosophy, traveled extensively in Western
Europe before becoming an officer in the Austrian army in
the 1809 war against France. After entering the Prussian diplomatic
service, he was appointed Prussian consul-general
in Rome and took part in the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle
(1818). In the same year he became Prussian chargé d’affaires
at the court of Tuscany with the title of privy councillor of
legation.
Bartholdy was an enthusiastic art patron and his home
was decorated with frescoes by the Nazarenes, a group of contemporary
German artists devoted to the revival of Christian
art. After his death, the murals were bought by the Prussian
government who also acquired his important collection of
Etruscan vases, bronze, and ivory.
add bibliography: C. Lambour, “Quellen zur Biographie
von Fanny Hensel, geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy,” in: G. Klein
and R. Elvers (eds.), Mendelssohn-Studien, vol. 6. (1986), 49–105.
[Ernest Hamburger]
°BARTOLOCCI, GIULIO (1613–1687), Italian Christian
Hebraist and bibliographer. Bartolocci was taught Hebrew by
the convert Giovanni Battista Jonah Galileo (formerly Judah
180 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3