JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

the administration of justice, the advancement of the rule
of law, and the improvement of society as a whole.” His
nomination was co-signed by every judge on the Third Circuit.
Judge Becker served in leadership roles in his synagogue,
but judicial rules precluded active participation in many
Jewish organizations committed to fundraising, or to social
issues that may come before the Court. Jewish leaders – cultural,
philanthropic, civic, and entrepreneurial – have consulted
with him often to benefit from his wisdom and insight.
Bibliography: S.B. Burbank, “Making Progress the Old-
Fashioned Way,” in: University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2001),
1231; M.A. Hamilton, “A Truly Remarkable Judge,” ibid., 1237; D.H.
Souter, “Tribute to the Honorable Edward R. Becker,” ibid., 1229.
[Jerome J. Shestack (2nd ed.)]
BECKER, GARY STANLEY (1930– ), American economist,
Nobel Prize winner. Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Becker
was educated at Princeton and the University of Chicago. He
was the Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics at the University
of Chicago and, from 1985, a columnist for Business
Week magazine. A free-market philosopher, Becker applied
the methods of economics to aspects of human behavior previously
considered the domain of sociology, anthropology, and
demography. Early in his career, for example, he decided that
racial and ethnic bias could be maintained only if markets
were not completely competitive. The idea that discrimination
takes a financial toll on the discriminator is an accepted
concept among economists today, thanks to Becker. And in
his 1964 book Human Capital, he raised the idea of considering
education as an economic decision.
In the late 1960s he postulated that the way to reduce
crime was to raise the probability of punishment or make
the punishment more severe. His insights into crime helped
develop a new branch of economics. He also examined the
family unit, considering the household as a small business
the behavior of which could be analyzed by applying economic
principles.
In 1967 Becker won the John Bates Clark Award of the
American Economic Association and served as president of
the association in 1987. In 1992 he was awarded the Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Science “for having extended
the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior
which had previously been dealt with – if at all – by other
social science disciplines such as sociology, demography, and
criminology.” Other books by Becker include: The Economics
of Discrimination (1957), The Allocation of Time and Goods
Over the Life Cycle (1975), A Treatise on the Family (1981), The
Economic Approach to Human Behavior (1992), The Essence
of Becker (1995), and The Economics of Life: From Baseball to
Affirmative Action to How Real World Issues Affect Our Everyday
Life (1996) – a collection of Becker’s popular Business
Week columns.
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]
Becker, Jurek
BECKER, JULIUS (1881–1945), German Zionist journalist
and politician. Becker was born in Gottesberg, Silesia, into
an acculturated German-Jewish trading family. He studied
at Berne University (Ph.D. in graphology). While in Switzerland,
he joined the Zionist Democratic Fraction of Ch.
*Weizmann, who had been appointed assistant lecturer at Geneva
University in 1901. Shortly after, Becker moved to Berlin
and joined the staff of the renewed Zionist weekly Juedische
Rundschau (1895–1938), which, in Oct. 1902, had been taken
over by H. *Loewe. Originally established as Berliner Vereinsbote
(1895–1901) and first renamed Israelitische Rundschau
(1901–02), it served as the official organ of the Zionistische
Vereinigung fuer Deutschland (est. 1897). When Loewe resigned
in Dec. 1908, Becker became editor-in-chief, followed
by Felix Abraham in Oct. 1911. From 1906 to 1913, he also
frequently contributed to the central Zionist organ Die Welt
(1897–1914), signing himself “JB.” In 1908, immediately after
the Young Turk Revolution, he assisted R. *Lichtheim and V.
*Jabotinsky in Constantinople to win the new regime’s support
for Zionism. Soon, Becker became a prominent figure
in German Zionist organizations and was elected to both the
Executive and Central Committee of the ZVfD. In addition,
Becker contributed to political publications, especially those
of the Ullstein company, such as Berliner Morgenpost (est.
1898) and Vossische Zeitung (taken over in 1913 and edited by
G. *Bernhard). After 1919, Becker became correspondent of
the Vossische Zeitung at the League of Nations in Geneva, for
a time also chairing the assembly of press correspondents assigned
to the League. From 1925, he extended considerable
help to V. *Jacobson, the delegate of the Jewish Agency at the
League, taking over this post on the latter’s death in Aug. 1934.
In 1935, Becker went to Shanghai to organize the Chinese Information
Service for the Kuomintang government, returning
to Switzerland in 1937. As a stateless person, he had to
emigrate to the United States in 1941, where he continued his
journalistic activities. In his History of German Zionism (1954),
Lichtheim described Becker as “a very gifted journalist and
a charming companion who, due to his numerous contacts,
served Zionism a great deal.”
Bibliography: S. Rawidowitz (ed.), Sefer Sokolow, (1943),
353–60; Aufbau. No. 18 (1945); MB (June 29, 1945); M. Waldman, in:
Ha-Olam (July 5, 1945); R. Lichtheim, Geschichte des deutschen Zionismus
(1954), 157, 195; K. Blumenfeld, in: M. Sambursky and J. Ginat
(eds.), Im Kampf um den Zionismus (1976), 299; Y. Eloni, Zionismus
in Deutschland (1987), index; H. Schmuck (ed.), Jewish Biographical
Archive (1995), F. 123, 303; Series II (2003), F. II/46, 330–36.
[Johannes Valentin Schwarz (2nd ed.)]
BECKER, JUREK (1937–1997), German writer of Polish-Jewish
background. Born in Lodz, Becker grew up in the Lodz
ghetto and the concentration camps of Ravensbrueck and
Sachsenhausen. In 1945 he moved with his parents, who had
survived the war together, to East Berlin. He joined the Freie
Deutsche Jugend Communist youth organization and the
Communist Party (SED) while studying philosophy. In 1960
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