JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

akshi-doron, eliahu
ground comic strip Fritz the Cat in 1972. The X-rated feline
who uttered profanities onscreen stirred controversy. “There
was talk about if I were a pornographer or not,” Bakshi said.
“What I did was anti everything animation was about.” Animated
characters, he felt, could elicit more powerful emotions
than flesh-and-blood actors. His next feature, Heavy Traffic,
was even more outrageous than Fritz, which went on to gross
more than $90 million worldwide, creating a previously unknown
market, adult animation. Traffic was a nihilistic, highly
scatological tale of a young New York artist’s drawing board
fantasies. It featured several Jewish characters. In 1975 Bakshi
released Coonskin, a savage attack on Hollywood racial stereotypes.
It was one of the first animated features to depict black
characters (drug dealers). Civil rights organizations boycotted
the film to protest its unflattering portrayal of blacks.
After three urban animated dramas, Bakshi turned to fantasy
in 1977 with Wizards, “about the creation of the State of
Israel and the Holocaust, about the Jews looking for a homeland,
and about the fact that fascism was on the rise again,” he said.
Bakshi withdrew from animated films but returned in 1981 with
American Pop, a social history about four generations of Jewish-
American immigrants. He devoted the next decade to painting
but returned to animation with the 1992 film Cool World.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
BAKSHI-DORON, ELIAHU (1941– ), rabbi, Sephardi chief
rabbi of Israel. Bakshi-Doron was born in Jerusalem, where
he studied at Hebron yeshivah and in the kollelim of Mosad
Ha-Rav Kook and Kol Ya’akov.
He served as a neighborhood rabbi in Bat Yam, becoming
the city’s chief rabbi in 1972. In 1975 he was appointed chief
Sephardi rabbi of Haifa, serving in that capacity until elected
Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel in 1993. His ten-year term ended
in April 2003.
On September 12, 2001, Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron called
on the Islamic clerics who had published a fatwa (religious
edict) ordering suicide-bombings and declaring the bombers
shahids – martyrs – to rescind it and call on the world to
preserve the sanctity of life, and to forbid large-scale attacks
on innocent civilians. At times, Bakshi-Doron has taken controversial
stands. At one point, he suggested that the Moslems
retain their authority over the Temple Mount. However, he
did decry the unsupervised Arab construction that has taken
place on the Temple Mount in recent years. Bakshi-Doron
also suggested that Israel’s Marriage Law be rescinded, thus
ending the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly on marriage and divorce.
Since the rabbinic process was creating more enemies
than friends of Judaism among secular Jews, perhaps the time
had come for radical change. This particular statement caused
a great uproar in religious circles.
Bakshi-Doron published dozens of articles reflecting
his Torah learning, studies dealing with halakhic solutions to
medical, economic, legal, and social problems as well as facets
of political science. His work Binyan Av (vol. 1, 1982; vol. 2,
1989) deals with many facets of halakhah and also gives rab-
binic responses to current issues. A third volume appeared
following the order of the weekly Torah readings to which
Rabbi Bakshi-Doron brings new light to aggadah and Jewish
thought. The book also contains speeches given by the rabbi.
Throughout his career, Rabbi Bakshi-Doron has worked for
Torah education, establishing, among others, a kolel in Tel
Aviv, an advanced bet midrash in Bat Yam, and a Torah learning
center in Haifa. Bakshi-Doron also served as president of
the Committee of Sephardi Communities and was a board
member of numerous social and charitable foundations. He
was also a member of the Board of Directors of LIBI.
[David Derovan (2nd ed.)]
BAKST, LEON (born Lev Samuilovich Rosenberg; 1864–
1924), Russian artist. Born in St. Petersburg, he took the name
Leon Bakst to honor his maternal grandfather. In his youth he
was baptized but later returned to Judaism. At the age of 15, on
the advice of the sculptor *Antokolski, he enrolled in the Academy
of Fine Arts. In 1890 he met Alexander Benois, a Russian
artist who introduced Bakst to the Mir Iskusstva (“World of
Art”) group that tried to overcome the prevailing provincialism
of Russian art and to link Russia to the West. The impresario
Serge Diaghilev was a member and he employed Bakst
as chief designer of costumes and décors for his ballets. From
its start in Paris, in 1909, until his death, Bakst was associated
with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The subjects for the ballets
were usually taken from Russian folklore, or from Oriental
tales. Bakst, with his vivid imagination and his predilection
for bright color, provided an atmosphere that carried the audience
into a fairyland. While his creations are no longer in
use on the stage, his sketches in pencil, pen-and-ink, crayon,
watercolor, gouaches, or mixed media often appear in exhibitions
of Russian art. They have become particularly appreciated
since the recent revival of interest in art nouveau. As a
teacher at the Svanseva School in St. Petersburg, Bakst had a
strong influence on the young Marc *Chagall.
Bibliography: A. Levinson, Bakst (Fr., 1924); R. Lister, The
Moscovite Peacock; A Study of the Art of L. Bakst (1954).
[Alfred Werner]
BAKST, NICOLAI (Noah) IGNATYEVICH (1843–1904),
Russian scientist, writer, and public figure. Born in Mir, Belorussia,
Bakst studied at the rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir,
where his father Isaac Moses taught Talmud, and thereafter at
the University of St. Petersburg. After graduating, he was sent
to Germany by the Russian Ministry of Public Instruction.
There he continued his studies under the noted physiologist
Hermann Helmholtz and others. In 1867 he was appointed
lecturer in physiology at the University of St. Petersburg, specializing
in the study of the nervous system. He wrote a number
of works in German and Russian on physiology and the
nervous system.
The emergence of antisemitism in Germany and the pogroms
in Russia of 1881 awakened Bakst’s interest in the Jew-
74 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3