JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ender, alfred philip
grandmother before he was 20. After having studied under Johann
Gottfried von Schadow, he followed the son of Johann
Gottfried, Wilhelm von Schadow, to Duesseldorf in 1827 and
enrolled in the Duesseldorf School of Painting, whose head
was Wilhelm Schadow. In 1830 he accompanied Schadow to
Italy, where for one year he devoted himself exclusively to
the study of Raphael, Michelangelo and the Nazarenes. There
he apparently formed his taste for painting monumental historical
scenes in a classicist style. Bendemann produced his
best-known paintings between 1831 and 1835, among them
The Exiles of Babylon (1832), Two Girls at the Well (1833), Jeremiah
at the Destruction of Jerusalem (1836) and Die Kuenste
am Brunnen der Poesie (1837). In 1835 Bendemann married
Schadow’s sister Lida. He was appointed professor at the Academy
of Fine Arts of Dresden in 1838 and executed a number
of murals for the royal palace there. In the revolution of 1848
he was an active member of pro-revolutionary leagues. In
1859 he succeeded his former teacher and brother-in-law as
director of the Academy in Duesseldorf, but resigned in 1867
due to ill health. He was commissioned to paint portraits of
well-known figures, and a large number of his works are exhibited
in Berlin museums. In addition, his illustrations in the
neo-classical style appear in such literary works as the Nibelungenlied
(published 1840 in Leipzig) and Lessing’s Nathan
the Wise. His son RUDOLF (1851–1884) was also a well-known
painter. His elder son FELIX (1848–1915) was an admiral and
chief of Naval Staff.
Bibliography: Roth, Art, 544; J. Schrattenholz, Eduard
Bendemann (Ger., 1891). Add. Bibliography: W. Aschenborn,
Eduard Bendemann (1811–1885). Das Direktorat an der Düsseldorfer
Kunstakademie 1859–67 (1998); L. von Donop (ed.): Ausstellung der
Werke von Eduard Bendemann in der Koeniglichen Nationalgalerie
(1890); W. von Kalnein (ed.), Die Duesseldorfer Malerschule (1979);
Die Handzeichnungen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Duesseldorfer Malerschule.
Die erste Jahrhunderthaelfte Teil 1: Tafeln;. 1978. Teil 2: Textband. 1980.
Bearb. v. Ute Ricke-Immel. (1980); B. Maaz, Johann Gottfried Schadow
und die Kunst seiner Zeit (1995).
[Pnina Nave / Sonja Beyer (2nd ed.)]
BENDER, ALFRED PHILIP (1863–1937), South African
minister. The son of a minister of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation
in Ireland, he was the recognized leader of Cape
Town Jewry for many years, both in religious and secular affairs.
He was minister of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation,
the “mother congregation” of South Africa, from 1895
for 42 years and was responsible for initiating many educational,
social, and cultural activities, including special services
for children, confirmation services for girls, Sunday morning
classes for women, and debating and social clubs for young
men, taking a special interest in Jewish university students.
Although very English in outlook and not sympathetic to the
ways of “foreigners,” he always gave generous assistance to
East European immigrants in their settlement problems. He
was long opposed to the principle of a representative lay body
for South African Jewry, and in consequence his congregation
did not affiliate with the Board of Deputies until 1919. He was
also unsympathetic to the Zionist movement, but supported
it after the Balfour Declaration. In the general community he
was prominent in numerous educational and philanthropic
endeavors, giving long service to the Cape Town hospital
board, the school board, the council of the Cape Town University,
and a variety of nondenominational philanthropic
organizations.
Bibliography: I. Abrahams, Birth of a Community (1955), index;
G. Saron and L. Hotz (eds.), Jews in South Africa (1955), index.
[Gustav Saron]
BENDER, MORRIS BORIS (1905–1983), U.S. neurologist.
Bender, who was born in Russia, was taken to the United States
in 1914. After graduating in medicine he trained in neurology
and psychiatry in several New York hospitals. He was research
fellow in neurophysiology at Yale University (1936–38) and
New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital (1938–42). He then served
as head of the laboratory of experimental neurology at New
York University (1942–50). He joined the faculty of neurology
at the New York University College of Medicine in 1938,
becoming professor of clinical neurology in 1953. In 1966 he
was appointed professor and chairman of the department of
neurology of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He was
also clinical professor of neurology at Columbia University’s
College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1953 to 1967. Bender’s
major research interests were the physiology of the visual
and oculomotor systems and behavioral neurology, especially
consciousness and perception. His major works are Disorders
in Perception (1952) and Visual Field Defects after Penetrating
Missile Wounds of the Brain (in collaboration with others,
1960); he also edited The Oculomotor System (1964) and The
Approach to Diagnosis in Modern Neurology (1967).
[Fred Rosner]
BENDERLY, SAMSON (1876–1944), U.S. educator. Benderly,
who was born in Safed, Palestine, emigrated to Baltimore in
1898. He received a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University.
During his internship Benderly became interested in
modern Jewish education in Baltimore and abandoned his
medical career. In 1910 he was appointed director of the first
Bureau of Jewish Education in the United States, in New York.
This agency outlasted its parent body, the kehillah of New York
City, and was molded by Benderly’s lifework. Benderly conceived
of a comprehensive educational program to raise the
level of Jewish life in America. He was the American organizer
of Ivrit be-Ivrit pedagogy – the use of Hebrew as the language
of instruction. He initiated pilot schools that developed curricula
and experimented with new ideas. He organized school
board representatives, formed principals’ and teachers’ study
groups, and initiated a leadership-training program to make
Jewish education a profession. Benderly also pioneered in the
education of Jewish girls, and in adolescent and secondary
Jewish schooling. He experimented with Jewish educational
326 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3