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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.
Obituary
(2020)
Zeichen des Umbruchs
(1997)
Excerpt: Hasidic Ashkenazi literature is known to scholars of Jewish religion as one of the most prolific sources of medieval Jewish magic or magical beliefs. This is all the more astonishing as the non esoteric writings of the Hasidey Ashkenaz represent a rather traditional Jewish piety as known to us from talmudic sources. Considering this duality of an almost traditional Jewish piety on the one hand and very distinct magic tenets on the other, we may ask whether the Hasidey Ashkenaz themselves perceived any difference between magic and religion. There are indeed a number of modern historians of religion who completely deny the validity of such a distinction, for in most historical religions magic and religion are in fact intertwined to a certain degree, thus permitting almost no differentiation between the two.
Excerpt: The shrill sounds of the now seemingly outdated controversy between Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber at the beginning of the sixties are still in the minds of every student of Hasidic literature and thought. - The "Scholem-community" feels content and the "Buber-community" upset. We can summarize the case in a few words. Martin Buber, the pioneer of Hasidism in the Western World, held the position that whoever would want to understand Hasidism had to turn to Hasidic tale as here, in the tales of the Hasidim, real Hasidic life was to be found. Whereas in the Hasidic homilies we meet mere non-creative tradition especially in the form of Kabbalah. Buber did not totally deny the importance of the Hasidic Midrash but he regarded it just as a commentary, i.e. as secondhand material, whereas, in his view, the tale was a true mirror of real Hasidic life [...]
Reuchlin und die Kabbala
(1993)
Auszug: Hundert Jahre nachdem Johannes Reuchlin sein wissenschaftliches Werk vollendet hatte, war der von ihm hinterlassene Eindruck auf die europäische Wissenschaft und das europäische Denken so nachdrücklich, daß er - liebe- oder vorwurfsvoll - einmal >Rabbi Capnion< genannt wurde. Und wirklich - so meint Joseph Blau in seiner Darstellung der christlichen Kabbala - habe Reuchlin der hebräischen Literatur mehr gedient als mancher ordentliche Rabbiner. Ähnlich hat Gershom Scholem, der Begründer der modernen Kabbalaforschung, anläßlich der Entgegennahme des Reuchlin-Preises der Stadt Pforzheim im Jahre 1969 Reuchlin gerühmt, mit dem er die wissenschaftliche Erforschung der jüdischen Kabbala beginnen läßt. Einschränkend läßt Scholem indessen diese Auszeichnung erst für Reuchlins zweites Buch zur Kabbala gelten, für >De arte cabalistica<. Und in der Tat hat Reuchlin vom Erscheinen seines ersten kabbalistischen Werkes >De verbo mirifico< von 1494 bis zum Erscheinen der >Ars cabalistica< im Jahre 1517 beachtliche Fortschritte in seiner Kenntnis der Kabbala gemacht.
Excerpt: The writings from the thirteenth century called by Gershom Scholem the "Writings of the 'lyyun circle" are one of the most intriguing chapters of early kabbalah - this I need not to elaborate on as it is a well known fact to anyone whoever had read these texts or the literature about them. When reading these texts, one gets the impression as if the authors had at hand a box full of terms and phrases into which everybody could just stick his hand and take terms and phrases out of it in order to arrange them according to his own taste, disregarding the meaning they have in the writings of his fellow kabbalists. The result was, that we now have before us a large number of varying mosaic pictures in which we detect again and again the same mosaic pebbles, however composed differently.
Inhalt: I. Erinnern und Erlösung 1. Gedenken oder Erinnern in der talmudischen Antike 2. Die Transzendentierung des Gedenkens in der frühen Kabbala des 13. Jahrhunderts 3. Die Historisierung und Psychologisierung der theosophischen kabbalistischen Auffassungen vom Gedenken in der lurianischen Kabbala des 16. Jahrhunderts 4. Die psychologisch, individualsoteriologische Deutung des Erinnerns im Chasidismus II. Das Fest und die Erlösung 1. Die talmudischen Deutungen der biblischen Feste 2. Die Sicht der Philosophen des Mittelalters und die Reaktion der Kabbala
Auszug: Religionen, die sich auf eine einmalige Offenbarung in einer fernen Vergangenheit berufen, sehen sich mit zunehmender Ferne vom Offenbarungsereignis unausweichlich einer Kluft zwischen der unwandelbaren offenbarten Wahrheit und den veränderten menschlichen Umständen gegenüber, die sie auf. die eine oder andere Weise überbrücken müssen. Dann aber stellt sich das Problem, wie und ob die neue Antwort auf die Herausforderung der Gegenwart als Wort Gottes und vollgültige Offenbarung gelten kann. Letzteres ist außerdem nicht nur eine Frage der Autorität der so sich an die Offenbarung anschließenden Tradition, sondern eine Frage der Gottunmittelbarkeit und des Zweifels, ob der Mensch in der Ferne vom Offenbarungsereignis in seiner eigenen Gegenwart noch direkt von Gott angesprochen werden kann. Es ist eine Frage der 'Wärme1 der Gottesnähe, ohne die Religion ja nicht auskommen kann. [...]