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- Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e. V. (421) (remove)
This article explores childhood discourses in the Jewish society of the Russian Empire. It focuses on images of parents, while exploring the differences between pre-modern and modern narrative types in Jewish autobiographies. In the pre-modern paradigm, mothers are barely present while fathers appear more often, although neither parent demonstrates emotional affection toward the child. In the modern paradigm, parents are either equally present or the mother is more prominent, they engage in the everyday activities with the child, and do not hesitate to show their emotional love. Moreover, the notions of inner world and child’s individuality emerge. These changes correspond to major shifts in discourses shaping the attitude toward children in the European society.
The article deals with the family backgrounds and school careers of teachers for religious education at Jewish higher schools during the 19th century. As many of them are known because of their academic publications, our knowledge about their work as teachers is still a desideratum. Therefore, biographies of teachers at both Jewish higher schools in Frankfurt (Main) are presented and compared with the objective to identify typical structures. A key finding is the fact that access to the position as a teacher was not much formalized. Different ways to become a teacher were characteristic for both schools whilst the Modern Orthodox “Unterrichtsanstalt der Israelitischen Religionsgesellschaft” (IRG) was furthermore characterized by close family relations between its teachers. On the other hand, within the liberal network there existed a strong support based on shared convictions which worked as counterpart to the familiar network of the Modern Orthodox School.
The paper investigates how cultural and social capital were passed down to the next generations via letters of recommendation. Focusing on fathers recommending their sons to German Jewish banker Gerson (von) Bleichröder, the paper asks how father-son relations were described and which role equivalent backgrounds, especially in terms of Jewishness and social standing, played in this process. Mainly discussed are four different patriarchs approaching Bleichröder on behalf of their sons to further their careers. Making use of methods such as historical network analysis and semantic analysis the paper introduces the letters of recommendation as a complex yet promising practice in order to maintain, strengthen and even further the family’s (social) capital over generational changes. The paper finds trust and tradition to be crucial for successful recommendations. Situated at a liminal point of economic and personal spheres, recommendations shed new light on crucial questions of 19th-century Jewish history, such as acculturation and distinctiveness as well as on intra-familial dynamics in the face of profound social transformation.
In 1810, Moses Lackenbacher, together with two of his children, Israel and Heinrich, and Moses Löwenstein created the company “Moses Lackenbacher & Compagnie” with headquarters in Nagykanizsa and a branch in Vienna. The main profile of the company was army purveyance. The business activity resulted in a high spatial mobility which led to socio-cultural acculturation and conversions to Christianity within the kinship. This paper explores the connection between kinship and the operation of the company on the basis of the prominent yet little-researched Lackenbachers in the early 19th-century Habsburg Monarchy. Central questions are how the relatives organized a company during the Napoleonic wars, as well as the impact of operating a business; how familial bonds and kinship links were affected, and, in this context, how relatives together evolved into a multi-religious network of kinship.
Tu felix Camelot nube!
(2020)
This article explores the ways in which the Yiddish Arthurian romance Viduvilt (sixteenth ct.) reworks its Middle High German model text, Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Wigalois (1210/1220), for an early modern Jewish audience. Through seemingly minor changes, the adaptor creates a story world in which family politics play an essential role and become the driving force behind the story development. Part of this change is the reevaluation of female figures, in particular mothers. In contrast to its model, the Arthurian knight in Viduvilt is created as a figure that relies and depends largely on the decisions made by mothers, who are portrayed as powerful matres familias.
Genealogical documents offer crucial information on various aspects of Jewish history. They are still underappreciated by many historians, and there is little overlap between academic researchers and the genealogical community, for whom such documents serve a different purpose, as they retrieve individual family histories. The article provides an overview of the material held by Leo Baeck Institute Archives and Library as well as other digital resources for family research today.
Squaring the pedigree
(2020)
Arthur Czellitzer (1872 – 1943) embodies the interdependence between eugenics and genealogy in early 20th-century Germany. He developed widely discussed genealogical recording techniques designed both for studies about human heredity and for the use in historical family research. When he shifted his focus from medical family studies to Jewish family research after World War I, he maintained a eugenic agenda which was now primarily targeted at the preservation of the “Jewish race.”
In 1924, the Berlin ophthalmologist Arthur Czellitzer (1871–1943) and like-minded members of the local Jewish community founded the Society for Jewish Family Research. A year later, the Society launched the journal Jüdische Familienforschung (Jewish Family Research), edited by Czellitzer. The Society was an outstanding platform of professional academic and amateur researchers and promoted a type of Jewish genealogy and family history that was shaped by the historical-medical discourse of the time. The concepts and methods of both the biological sciences and Wissenschaft des Judentums shaped and defined the academic approach to family research and history in Czellitzer’s and the Society’s work. The Society soon became the leading international association for the academic Jewish genealogical research. Despite of its brutal end in 1938, Arthur Czellitzer’s and the Society’s works, the issues raised, and the methods they created shape Jewish family research and genealogy until today.
The Jewish family has been the subject of much admiration and analysis, criticism and myth-making, not just but especially in modern times. As a field of inquiry, its place is at the intersection – or in the shadow – of the great topics in Jewish Studies and its contributing disciplines. Among them are the modernization and privatization of Judaism and Jewish life; integration and distinctiveness of Jews as individuals and as a group; gender roles and education. These and related questions have been the focus of modern Jewish family research, which took shape as a discipline in the 1910s.
This issue of PaRDeS traces the origins of academic Jewish family research and takes stock of its development over a century, with its ruptures that have added to the importance of familial roots and continuities. A special section retrieves the founder of the field, Arthur Czellitzer (1871–1943), his biography and work from oblivion and places him in the context of early 20th-century science and Jewish life.
The articles on current questions of Jewish family history reflect the topic’s potential for shedding new light on key questions in Jewish Studies past and present. Their thematic range – from 13th-century Yiddish Arthurian romances via family-based business practices in 19th-century Hungary and Germany, to concepts of Jewish parenthood in Imperial Russia – illustrates the broad interest in Jewish family research as a paradigm for early modern and modern Jewish Studies.
The Book of Radiance
(2019)
Tewje in Deutschland
(2019)
Drawing on the example of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, this article covers the history of Yiddish translation and publication in Germany in the 20th century.Following the paradigm of translation as a cultural practice, I demonstrate how the translation reflects aspects of Jewish-German cultural history, focussing on a mainly inner-Jewish identity discourse before the Shoah and a remembrance context after it. Whereas decisive differences and changes characterize 20th-century history in diachronic as well as synchronic respect, the article reflects also on continuities and parallels.
The Ram Bible (Tanakh Ram) is a recently-published Bible edition printed in two columns: the right-hand column features the original biblical Hebrew text and the lefthand column features the translation of the Bible into a high-register literary Israeli (Reclaimed Hebrew). The Ram Bible edition has gained impressive academic and popular attention. This paper looks at differences between academics, teachers, students, media personalities and senior officials in the education system, regarding their attitude to the Ram Bible. Our study reveals that Bible teachers and students who make frequent use of this edition understand its contribution to comprehending the biblical language, stories, and ideas. Opponents of Ram Bible are typically administrators and theoretician scholars who advocate the importance of teaching the Bible but do not actually teach it themselves. We argue that the fundamental difference between biblical Hebrew and Israeli makes the Hebrew Bible incomprehensible to native Israeli speakers. We explain the advantages of employing tools such as the Ram Bible.
This paper addresses issues of translating both words and rituals as Muslim cemetery keepers care for Jewish graves and recite traditional prayers for the dead in Morocco. Several issues of translation must be dealt with while considering these rare and disappearing practices. The first issue to be discussed is the translation of Hebrew inscriptions into French by cemetery keepers. One cemetery keeper in Meknes has tried to compile an exhaustive index of the names and dates represented on the gravestones under her care. The Muslim guard of the Jewish cemetery in Sefrou, on the other hand, has somewhat famously told visitors differing stories about his ability and willingness to pray the Kaddish over the graves of emigrated relatives who cannot return to mark an anniversary death. These practices provide the context for considering how the act of Muslims caring for Jewish graves creates linguistic and ritual translations of traditional Jewish ancestor care.
Scholars of modern Jewish thought explore the hermeneutics of “translation” to describe the transference of concepts between discourses. I suggest a more radical approach – translation as transvaluation – is required. Eschewing modern tests of truth such as “the author would have accepted it” and “the author should have accepted it,” this radical form of translation is intentionally unfaithful to original meanings. However, it is not a reductionist reading or a liberating text. Instead, it is a persistent squabble depending on both source and translation for sustenance. Exploring this paradigm entails a review of three expositions of the Korah biblical narrative; three readings dedicated to keeping an eye on current events: (1) Tsene-rene (Prague, 1622), biblical prose; (2) Yaldei Yisrael Kodesh, (Tel Aviv, 1973), a secular Zionist reworking of Tsene-rene; and (3) The Jews are Coming (Israel, 2014–2017) a satirical television show.
Tewje in Deutschland
(2019)
Drawing on the example of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, this article covers the history of Yiddish translation and publication in Germany in the 20th century.Following the paradigm of translation as a cultural practice, I demonstrate how the translation reflects aspects of Jewish-German cultural history, focussing on a mainly inner-Jewish identity discourse before the Shoah and a remembrance context after it. Whereas decisive differences and changes characterize 20th-century history in diachronic as well as synchronic respect, the article reflects also on continuities and parallels.
This article explores an instructive case of translation critique against the background of the rise of Zionism in Europe at the turn of the previous century. It seeks to answer the question: Why did David Frishman, one of the most prolific Hebrew writers and translators of the late 1890s and early 1900s, criticize Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Russian translation of Hayim Nahman Bialik’s Hebrew poems? Both Bialik and Jabotinsky were major figures in the field of Hebrew culture and Zionist politics in the early 1900s, while Frishman generally shunned partisan activism and consistently presented himself as devoted solely to literature. Frishman perceived literature, nevertheless, as a political arena, viewing translation, in particular, as a locus of ideological debate. Writing from the viewpoint of a political minority at a time in which the Hebrew translation industry in Europe gained momentum, Frishman deemed translation a tool for cementing cultural hierarchies. He anticipated later analyses of the act and products of translation as reflective of intercultural tensions. The article suggests, more specifically, that it was Frishman’s view of the Hebrew Bible that informed his “avant-garde” stance on translation.
Rabbi Jacob ben Isaac of Yanova (d. 1623) is best known as the author of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah; the Melits Yosher (“Intercessor before God”) is one of his lesser known works. It was first published in Lublin in 1622 and reprinted once in Amsterdam in 1688. Like the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, it was a Torah commentary, but composed for men who had some yeshivah education, but who could not continue their studies. The commentary on the Song of Songs by Isaac Sulkes is another Yiddish work that addresses the same audience as the Melits Yosher. The purpose of this article is to bring to scholarly attention an audience that has not been noticed or studied in the previous scholarship on early modern Yiddish literature.
Hilfe für Erez Israel
(2020)
Genisa-Blätter III
(2020)
Ursprünglich sollten die „Genisa-Blätter III“ ein europäisches Projekt werden. Veröffentlicht werden sollten Quellen aus Genisot, die im vormals deutschsprachigen Raum gehoben wurden. Das Vorhaben scheiterte. Nunmehr sind im Band sieben Beiträge versammelt, in denen kenntnisreich Funde aus den Ablagen in Alsenz, Altenschönbach, Memmelsdorf, Reckendorf und Veitshöchheim besprochen werden. Der achte Aufsatz knüpft am internationalen Vorhaben an: Im Mittelpunkt des Artikels stehen drei Genisafunde aus Tschechien, genauer gesagt aus den beiden ostböhmischen Ortschaften Luže und Rychnov nad Kněžnou. Alle acht Beiträge gemeinsam verdeutlichen die inhaltliche Spannbreite von Genisot, die sich die Forschung zunutze machen kann: Sie reicht von Aspekten der Wirtschaft und des Rechts, über die Religion bis hin zum alltäglichen Leben und bietet jeweils eigene Geschichten im Spannungsfeld des möglichen Scheiterns.
PaRDeS, the journal of the German Association for Jewish Studies, aims at exploring the fruitful and multifarious cultures of Judaism as well as their relations to their environment within diverse areas of research. In addition, the journal promotes Jewish Studies within academic discourse and reflects on its historic and social responsibilities.
PaRDeS
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PaRDeS, die Zeitschrift der Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e. V., erforscht die fruchtbare kulturelle Vielfalt des Judentums sowie ihre Berührungspunkte zur nichtjüdischen Umwelt in unterschiedlichen Bereichen. Daneben dient die Zeitschrift als Forum zur Positionierung der Fächer Jüdische Studien und Judaistik innerhalb des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses sowie zur Diskussion ihrer historischen und gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung.
Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) portrayed modern Zionist historical scholarship as both a rejection and a corrective fulfillment of earlier eras of Wissenschaft des Judentums. Through attacks on his scholarly predecessors, Scholem detailed his vision for the potential of this renaissance of Wissenschaft to entail both objective research and a commitment to treating Judaism as a “living organism,” an approach that would ultimately ensure the scholarship could deliver value to the Jewish community. This article will explore the tensions that arise from Scholem’s commitments, his occasional admissions of these tensions, and his attempts to overcome them.
Ismar Elbogen (1874–1943) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) were both pioneers in Jewish thought and culture. Elbogen authored the most comprehensive study on Jewish liturgy, while Rosenzweig’s magnum opus The Star of Redemption has emerged as one of the twentieth century’s most innovative and elusive works of Jewish thought. Even though Rosenzweig is not known for his work on or appreciation for the Wissenschaft des Judentums, this article will explore this overlooked aspect of his thought by exploring the influence of Ismar Elbogen. Commentaries to Rosenzweig’s views on prayer are numerous, yet none mention the work of Elbogen. This is a problem. By comparing Elbogen’s work on Jewish liturgy with Rosenzweig’s writings on prayer in the Star, we are able to demonstrate how methods seminal to the Wissenschaft des Judentums helped articulate several of Rosenzweig’s most innovative contributions to Jewish thought.
The St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy (PFA RAN) contains two manuscript biographies of Daniel Chwolson, the Russian-Jewish Orientalist, advocate of Jewish scholarship, and bridge builder to the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary. They were written by his pupil and colleague, Pavel Kokovtsov, and his grandson Yevgeny Chwolson, respectively. These two texts are studied against the background of published texts and popular opinion of Chwolson in late Imperial Russia. Apart from some details, these manuscripts offer limited additional information as factual sources, most of their contents being mere variation of published texts. However, the biography of Chwolson written by his grandson is a valuable source on the reception of Chwolson and illustrates the potential of further mythological appreciation of his personality and works in the Soviet time as a defense strategy for Chwolson’s family. It also contains crucial information on the fate of Chwolson’s archive.
Due to the lack of acceptance of Wissenschaft des Judentums in academia, modern Jewish scholarship in the nineteenth century organized itself along networks of institutions such as rabbinical seminaries, contacts with related disciplines like Oriental Studies, and personal relationships. This last pathway of communication was essential for the cohesion of modern Jewish scholarship. Therefore, my essay portrays the correspondence between David Kaufmann and Leopold Zunz as an example of this channel of communication. By analyzing the exchange of letters and personal encounters between the two scholars, particular attention will be paid to the following questions: How were the letters transmitted until today? What were the main topics of the correspondence between these representatives of two generations of Wissenschaft des Judentums? Which were the positions of Kaufmann and Zunz towards the present and future of modern Jewish scholarship? How did Kaufmann become the first biographer of Zunz?
This article examines the works of Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893) on the history of mysticism and the Kabbalah, which were written during his fourteen-year residence in Leipzig. It argues that studying the Spanish Kabbalists allowed Jellinek to work through ideas concerning the development of Jewish theology and the interplay of Jewish and non-Jewish philosophical perspectives. The article briefly describes Jellinek’s early education and attraction to Leipzig; his first writings on Kabbalah; and concludes with an analysis of his larger philological and genealogical projects on the authorship and literary background of the Zohar. Though Jellinek’s later prominence as a rabbi and preacher in Vienna has had the tendency to obscure his years in Leipzig, it was Jellinek’s work in Saxony that laid the groundwork for most of his subsequent scholarship on Jewish mysticism. This article is a brief introduction to this research and one more step toward revealing the still too often forgotten Wissenschaft interest in the history of Jewish mysticism.
Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892–1953) is often portrayed as antagonistic to secular studies. However, his writings show more of an intellectual hierarchy that places Torah wisdom at the top and all other wisdom a distant second. R. Dessler expended great effort promoting Torah scholarship while generally refraining from disparaging secular studies. Looking at the writings of his predecessors in the Mussar (moralist) movement, one can see that there was no disapproval of worldly education there, either: In fact, R. Dessler and his predecessors were well-educated in many secular disciplines. This essay looks to places R. Dessler’s attitude toward Wissenschaft des Judentums within the context of his life’s mission to advance talmudic study and his consequent unwillingness to countenance anything that detracted from furthering the learning of Torah. I argue that, whereas his extreme opposition to Wissenschaft was the result of his aversion to its aims, methods and conclusions, his nuanced relationship to Orthodox Wissenschaft was the result of the hierarchy through which he viewed secular as opposed to talmudic study.
Enlisted History
(2018)
Zeev Jawitz (1847–1924) was active in all spheres of culture: history, language, literature and pedagogy, all the while striving for harmonization with the Orthodox outlook. He understood that a people returning to its homeland needed a national culture, one that was both broad and deep, and that the narrow world of the Halakhah would no longer suffice. His main work was the multi-volume Toldot Israel (History of Israel, published 1895–1924) which encompasses Jewish history from its beginning – Patriarchs – until the end of the 19th century. His historical writing, with its emphasis on internal religious Jewish sources, the unity and continuity of Jewish history, and respect of Orthodox principles, comes as an alternative to the historiography of the celebrated historian Heinrich Graetz. The alternative that Jawitz tried to substitute for Wissenschaft des Judentums, was influenced not only by Orthodox ideology, which he supported, but also by his nationalist ideology. He saw himself and his disciples as the “priests of memory,” presenting the true and immanent history and character of the Jewish nation as a platform to the Jewish future in the land of Israel.