Judith Zaffirini

Judith Pappas Zaffirini (born February 13, 1946) is a Democratic member of the Texas State Senate from the 21st District, which includes her home city of Laredo in south Texas. On January 9, 2007, Zaffirini became the second in seniority in the 31-member Texas Senate, of which she has been a member since 1987. Zaffirini has been named among the "Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States" by Hispanic Business magazine, which has been published in California since 1979. Zaffirini is the first Mexican American woman elected to the Texas Senate.

Background

Zaffirini is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. While she and her attorney-husband, Carlos M. Zaffirini, Sr. (born 1943), were attending UT, they worked in the late 1960s on the staff of District 21 State Senator Wayne Connally, brother of Governor John B. Connally, Jr. During this time, serious attention was focused on establishing a university in Laredo. Soon the satellite campus of Texas A&M University - Kingsville, then known as Texas A&I, opened in Laredo. In 1970, Laredo State University was launched with Billy F. Cowart as the president, and in 1993, Senator Zaffirini secured legislation creating the four-year Texas A&M International University on a separate campus off the Bob Bullock Loop. Zaffirini's work in the education field led to her being named "Laredoan of the year" in 2009 by the Laredo Morning Times.

Book of Judith

The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book, included in the Septuagint and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian Old Testament of the Bible, but excluded from Jewish texts and assigned by Protestants to the Apocrypha. The book contains numerous historical anachronisms, which is why many scholars now accept it as non-historical; it has been considered a parable or perhaps the first historical novel.

The name Judith (Hebrew: יְהוּדִית, Modern Yehudit, Tiberian Yəhûḏîṯ ; "Praised" or "Jewess") is the feminine form of Judah.

Historical context

Original language

It is not clear whether the Book of Judith was originally written in Hebrew or in Greek. The oldest extant version is the Septuagint and might either be a translation from Hebrew or composed in Greek. Details of vocabulary and phrasing point to a Greek text written in a language modeled on the Greek developed through translating the other books in the Septuagint. The extant Hebrew language versions, whether identical to the Greek, or in the shorter Hebrew version, are medieval. The Hebrew versions name important figures directly such as the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, thus placing the events in the Hellenistic period when the Maccabees battled the Seleucid monarchs. The Greek version uses deliberately cryptic and anachronistic references such as "Nebuchadnezzar", a "King of Assyria," who "reigns in Nineveh," for the same king. The adoption of that name, though unhistorical, has been sometimes explained either as a copyist's addition, or an arbitrary name assigned to the ruler of Babylon.

Judith (1923 film)

Judith is a 1923 Dutch silent film directed by Theo Frenkel.

Cast

External links

Judith (given name)

Judith is a feminine given name derived from the Hebrew name יְהוּדִית or Yehudit, meaning "She will be praised" or "woman of Judea". Judith appeared in the Old Testament as the wife of Esau and in the Apocryphal Book of Judith.

The name was among the top 50 most popular given names for girls born in the United States between 1936 and 1956. Its popularity has since declined. It was the 893rd most popular name for baby girls born in the United States in 2012, down from 74th place in 1960.

Name variants

Alternative forms of the name Judith include: