JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

Becker, Lavy M.
he was ousted from the university for political reasons. After
he studied at the Film School of Babelsberg he worked as a
playwright and writer in East Berlin. Becoming more critical
of the East German regime and defending dissidents publicly,
he was thrown out of the Communist Party in 1976. A year
later he left East Germany and, after a brief stay in the United
States, settled in West Berlin.
Becker’s best-known book is his first novel Jakob der
Lugner (1968; Jacob the Liar, 1996), which tells the story of
Jacob, who owns a radio in the Warsaw ghetto and invents
hopeful stories about an imminent liberation. It became the
basis of one of the most successful East German movies. Der
Boxer (1976) describes the new existence of a concentration
camp survivor, while Bronsteins Kinder (1986; Bronstein’s Children,
1991) deals with the revenge of survivors against their
Nazi torturers. In the 1980s and 1990s he became well known
as a scriptwriter for many German TV comedies. Becker never
denied his Jewish background, which is apparent in most of
his major works, but stressed that in his life, Judaism played
no active role.
Bibliography: S.L. Gilman, Jurek Becker: A Life in Five
Worlds (2003).
[Michael Brenner (2nd ed.)]
BECKER, LAVY M. (1905–2001), Canadian rabbi, communal
official, businessman. Lavy Becker was born in Montreal to
Russian immigrant parents. His father was a shoḥet and cantor
there. Becker attended high school in Montreal and New
York, where he studied Talmud at Yeshiva College (*Yeshiva
University). He earned a B.A. at McGill University in 1926.
In 1930 he was ordained by the *Jewish Theological Seminary.
While at JTS, Becker came under the influence of Mordecai
*Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism (see
*Reconstructionism). Like his classmates and friends Ira
Eisenstein and Milton Steinberg, Becker’s career reflected a
profound commitment to Kaplan’s ideal of Judaism as a civilization,
a Judaism more expansive than what was usually
defined as the religious domain. After graduation, he became
rabbi at the Sunnyside Jewish Center and over the next ten
years he assumed executive positions at the Jewish Community
Centers of Detroit and New Haven as well as taking on the
position of executive director of the YM-YWHA in Montreal.
Ever ready to assume significant communal challenges, in
1945–46 Becker became the country director for displaced persons
in the American Zone of Occupation, under the auspices
of the Joint Distribution Committee and UNRWA, responsible
for the welfare of the thousands of Holocaust survivors.
After Becker’s return to Montreal, he never again assumed
a paid position within the Jewish community. He
worked first in the family business and then went on to work
for others and then himself, when he set up Lavy Becker Consultants.
However, he remained deeply involved in Jewish
communal life. In 1951, he was the founding rabbi at a new
Conservative synagogue (Congregation Beth-El) in the new
Jewish community of Mount Royal. Nine years later he realized
his ideal of setting up a Reconstructionist synagogue in
Montreal, Dorshei Emet, which he served as unpaid rabbi
until 1977. During those same decades, Becker served on the
executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the World
Jewish Congress, where he had special responsibilities for
smaller Jewish communities. He traveled extensively through
the Caribbean and Latin America, including Cuba, as well as
to Iceland. In Canada, he was appointed the chairman of the
Centennial Interfaith Council, helping organize Canada’s 1967
centennial celebrations.
Many regarded Lavy Becker’s life as an embodiment of
Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionist ideals. Within the Reconstructionist
movement he was highly regarded, becoming
president of the Federation of Reconstructionist Synagogues
(1969–72) and chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College (1969–74). In Montreal,
the Jewish Community Federation established in his honor
the Lavy M. Becker chair at the Reconstructionist College in
Philadelphia.
[Richard Menkis (2nd ed.)]
BEDA (Fritz Loehner; Fritz Loewy; 1883–1942), Viennese
journalist, satirist, and operetta librettist. Born in Wildenschwert,
now Usti nad Orlici in the Czech Republic, the Loewy
family changed its name to Loehner soon after moving to
Vienna. There Beda, whose name is short for Bedrich, Czech
for Friedrich, studied law, though already during his school
days he had begun to write satirical verse, including some
which ridiculed Jews who were attempting to assimilate into
Austrian society. In the 1920s Beda became one of the most
popular librettists in Vienna. Several of his works provoked
scandals, and quotations from them became household words.
The satires were published in contemporary Zionist periodicals,
and subsequently collected in Getaufte und Baldge taufte
(“Baptized and Newly Baptized,” 1908); and in Israeliten und
andere Anti-semiten (“Israelites and Other Anti-Semites,”
1909). A collection of personal lyrics is Ecce ego (1920). His
best-known libretti (with co-authors) were for Franz Lehar’s
Land of Smiles (1929) and Paul Abraham’s Ball in Savoy (1932);
he also collaborated with Fritz Gruenbaum. He was active in
the Zionist student organization *Kadimah, and president of
the *Hakoah sports club, for whose benefit he organized the
“Beda-Abende,” one of the highlights of the Vienna season.
In 1925 he married Helene Jellinek, with whom he had two
daughters. In 1938 Beda was arrested and sent to Dachau, and
subsequently deported to the *Buchenwald concentration
camp. There he organized cultural activities and in a competition
initiated by the camp commandant for a “camp song,”
Beda’s entry (submitted in a “kapo’s” name), the “Buchenwaldlied,”
was chosen as the winner and later became widely
known as a reaffirmation that “whatever our fate we still say
‘yes’ to life.” Beda’s wife, her mother, and both their daughters
246 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3