JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

adt, hermann
Columbia University. A lawyer and a professor of law, Badinter
was a well-known opponent of the death penalty and fighter
for civil rights. After taking office as minister of justice in 1981
he promoted and had passed – sometimes in the face of considerable
opposition – legislation towards the abrogation of
the death penalty, abrogation of the special tribunal for security
offenses (“Cour de sécurité de l’Etat”), and curtailment of
the powers of the police. His militant stand on these and related
issues made him the target of virulent attacks, sometimes
of an antisemitic nature. Prior to his joining the government
he had been active in Jewish organizations.
Before the change in the political majority in 1986, Badinter
was appointed president of the Constitutional Council,
which is the highest authority in France for interpreting the
constitution. He remained in this position till 1995. The same
year, he was elected senator from the Hauts-de-Seine district
and was reelected nine years later.
Badinter published L’Execution (1973); Liberté (1976);
L’abolition (2000, about his fight against the death penalty);
and two historical studies: Libres et égaux, l’émancipation des
Juifs sous la Révolution française (1989), on the emancipation
of Jews by the French Revolution, and Un antisémitisme ordinaire,
Vichy et les avocats juifs (1997), on the treatment of
Jewish lawyers by the Vichy regime.
[Gideon Kouts / Dror Franck Sullaper (2nd ed.)]
BADT, HERMANN (1887–1946), German civil servant and
constitutional lawyer, active in the Zionist movement. He was
the son of the classical scholar Benno Badt. Born in Breslau,
he maintained Orthodox traditions and joined the *Mizrachi
Party. From 1905 to 1908 he studied law in Breslau and Munich.
During World War I Badt served as Feldkriegsgerichtsrat.
In 1919, he was the first Jew in Prussia to be admitted
to the civil service after the revolution of 1918, first as Regierungsassessor,
then as a Regierungsrat in the German foreign
office. From 1922 to 1926 he was a Social Democratic member
of the Prussian Diet and then became the Ministerialdirektor
in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in charge of constitutional
affairs. In 1932 he represented Prussia before the Staatsgerichtshof
(State Court) of the German Reich in its unsuccessful
legal action against Chancellor von Papen, who had
deposed the legal government and instituted himself as a dictatorial
“Reichskommissar” (Reich Commissioner) in Prussia.
After his dismissal in 1933, he emigrated to Palestine, which he
had visited several times before. Among other enterprises, he
founded the Kinneret company to promote middle-class settlement
on the land where kibbutz Ein Gev was founded.
Add. Bibliography: Biographisches Handbuch der
deutschsprachigen Emigration, 1 (1980), 31; Y. Ilsar, in: TAJ, 20 (1991),
339–62.
[Encyclopaedia Hebraica / Marcus Pyka (2nd ed.)]
BADT-STRAUSS, BERTHA (1885–1970), writer, Zionist,
feminist. Badt-Strauss was born in Breslau. She was descended
from a well-known family of Jewish scholars and studied lit-
erature, languages, and philosophy in Breslau, Berlin, and
Munich. One of the first women awarded a doctoral degree
in Prussia, she worked as a researcher and publisher. She became
a Zionist and deeply involved in the Jewish Renaissance:
the creation of a Jewish community with a special Jewish culture.
With her husband Bruno Strauss, a teacher and expert
on Moses *Mendelssohn, she lived in Berlin from 1913 on.
In 1921 their only son, Albrecht, was born. Shortly after his
birth Badt-Strauss fell ill with multiple sclerosis. In spite of
this she continued writing numerous articles for Jewish publications,
such as the Jüdische Rundschau and the Israelitische
Familienblatt, and also for leading non-Jewish newspapers.
She also co-edited the first scholarly edition of Annette von
Droste-Huelshoff’s works and translated and edited volumes
of works by Gertrud Marx, Profiat *Duran, *Suesskind von
Trimberg, Heinrich *Heine, Rahel *Varnhagen, and Moses
Mendelssohn. She contributed to the Juedisches Lexikon and
the Encyclopaedia Judaica, wrote short stories, a serial novel,
and a collective biography of Jewish women.
As a religious Jewess and a patriotic German, Badt-
Strauss became not only one of the protagonists of the Jewish
Renaissance, she also participated in the German women’s
movement, wrote about German literature and included (supposed)
“Assimilanten” like Moses Mendelssohn or converts
like Rahel Varnhagen in her agenda. She tried to reinterpret
the return of prominent Jews to Judaism as a self-determined
step in the right direction and offered new role models for
identification.
Badt-Strauss’ intensive engagement with Jewish women
should also be mainly attributed to her aim of creating new
role models. Her only belief was in the need to return to Judaism
and eventually to Ereẓ Israel. By not specifying too narrowly
what this return should be like and what role women
had to play in Judaism and in the “Jischuw,” she invited women
to take part in the creation of a Jewish community that had
not seen women’s role in this context because of the rigid male
definition of Jewish femininity. Badt-Strauss was most successful
with her individual interpretation of the aims of the Jewish
Renaissance – her list of publications includes more than
600 editions and articles.
In 1939 Badt-Strauss immigrated to the United States. She
continued writing and published a biography of the American
Zionist Jessie *Sampter.
Bibliography: M. Steer, Bertha Badt-Strauss (1885–1970)
(2005).
[Martina Steer (2nd ed.)]
BAECK, LEO (1873–1956), German rabbi and religious
thinker, leader of Progressive Judaism. Baeck was born in
Lissa (now Lenzno, Poland) the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck.
Leo Baeck first studied at the Conservative Jewish Theological
Seminary of Breslau, and remained close to its approach
throughout his life. From 1894 Baeck studied at the Liberal
*Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin.
At the same time he also studied philosophy at the University
50 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3