ESTELLE, FRANCE – See Etoile.
ESTERHAZY – See Dreyfus Case.
ESTERKA – See Casimir III., the Great.
ESTHER – Name of the chief character in the Book of Esther, derived, according to some authorities, from the Persian "stara" (star); but regarded by others as a modification of "Ishtar," the name of the Babylonian goddess (see...
ESTHER, APOCRYPHAL BOOK OF – The canonical Book of Esther undoubtedly presents the oldest extant form of the Esther story. In times of oppression the Jews found comfort in this narrative, for it presented an example of sudden divine salvation in the days of...
ESTHER, FEAST OF – See Purim.
ESTHER RABBAH – Midrash to the Book of Esther in the current Midrash editions. From its plan and scope it is apparently an incomplete collection from the rich haggadic material furnished by the comments on the roll of Esther, which has been...
ESTHONIA – Government of Russia; one of the three Baltic Provinces. It has a total population (1897) of 404,709, of whom 1,468 are Jews. Not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century did Jewish artisans, and others specially...
ESTIMATE – Estimate differs greatly from Appraisement. The latter is a valuation put upon land or upon some commodity by men acting in a judicial capacity; the former is a sort of valuation made by the Mosaic law itself, mostly...
ESTRUMBA – Oriental Jewish family which has produced several rabbinical authors; takes its name from "Strumnitza" in Macedonia.Daniel Estrumsa: Rabbi and Talmudist; died at Salonica (?) in 1654. A pupil of Rabbi Mordecai Ḳala'i, he became...
'ET SHA'ARE RAẒON – A long poem on the binding of Isaac upon the altar ('AḲedah), written by Judah ben Samuel ibn Abbas, a twelfth-century rabbi of Fez, for chanting before the sounding of the shofar, and so utilized in the Sephardic liturgy of the...
ETAM – 1. Village of the tribe of Simeon (I Chron. iv. 32), not found in the parallel list of localities in Joshua.2. Place in Judah, near Bethlehem, fortified and garrisoned by Rehoboam (II Chron. xi. 6).3. A rock, also in Judah, to...
ETAMPES – Capital of the arrondissement of the department of Seine-et-Oise, France. The origin of the Jewish community of Etampes seems to go back to the twelfth century. King Louis VII. appointed a provost in this city, who alone had the...
ETERNAL LIFE – See Eschatology.
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT – See Eschatology.
ETHAN – 1. A man famous for his wisdom (I Kings iv. 31); it is said that Solomon was wiser than he, although it is not clear from this passage whether he was Solomon's contemporary or whether he lived before that king. The matter is...
ETHAUSEN, ALEXANDER BEN MOSES – German scholar; lived at Fulda in the seventeenth century. He was the author of a Judæo-German work in two parts: the first, "Bet Yisrael," a history of the Jews up to the destruction of the Second Temple; and the second, "Bet...
ETHER – One of the cities in the lowland of Judah allotted to Simeon (Josh. xv. 42, xix. 7).E. G. H. M. Sel.
ETHICAL CULTURE, SOCIETY FOR – A non-sectarian, ethicoreligious society founded at New York by Prof. Felix Adler in 1876. The society assumed the motto "Deed, not Creed," and adopted as the one condition of membership a positive desire to uphold by example...
ETHICS – The science of morals, or of human duty; the systematic presentation of the fundamental principles of human conduct and of the obligations and duties deducible therefrom. It includes, therefore, also the exposition of the...
ETHICS OF THE FATHERS – See Abot.
ETHIOPIA – The translation in the Authorized Version, following the ancient versions, of a name covering three different countries and peoples, viz.: (1) Ethiopia proper; (2) parts of northern Arabia; and (3) the regions east of Babylonia....
ETHNARCH – In the Greco-Roman world, one that stood at the head of any community, though not an independent ruler. The Hebrew word "rosh" ( ), especially in the Biblical works of the post-exilic time, had perhaps a meaning related to...
ETHNOLOGY – See Biblical Ethnology.
ETIQUETTE – Rules governing intercourse in polite society. Such rules are supposed by the Rabbis to have been laid down by the Bible itself. Moses modestly uses the plural in saying to Joshua, "Choose for us men and go fight with Amalek"...