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- Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e. V. (204) (remove)
Die Hauptströmung der orthodoxen jüdischen Gemeinschaft in Großbritannien, die vollständig integriert ist und am britischen Leben teilnimmt, scheint in gewisser Hinsicht, als ein beispielhaftes Modell für ein modernes orthodoxes Judentums gelten zu können. Der Begriff „Minhag Anglia” kann jedoch auch verwendet werden, um die oftmals unsystematisch von statten gehende Vermischung von Jüdischkeit und Britentum zu beschreiben, die als anglo-jüdische Lebensweise charakterisiert werden kann. In diesem Beitrag wird in Erwägung gezogen, ob der allgemein unreflektierte Charakter des „Minhag Anglia” es ausschließe, dass dieser als eine Strategie des modernen orthodoxen Judentums fungiere.
The Mariae Vitae Congregation was the first and possibly the most important missionary institution in Poland-Lithuania in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to the Rule of Mariae Vitae Congregation, it had to deal with religious and lay education of converted girls (mainly Jewish) and provide them with practical skills of work so they could establish in Catholic society. The innovatory social program of Mariae Vitae Congregation including education and financial help answered to possible problems of neophytes in Poland and Lithuania of that time.
This article explores the multi-directional geographic trajectories and ties of Jews who came to the United States in the 19th century, working to complicate simplistic understandings of “German” Jewish immigration. It focuses on the case study of Henry Cohn, an ordinary Russian-born Jew whose journeys took him to Prussia, New York, Savannah, and California. Once in the United States he returned to Europe twice, the second time permanently, although a grandson ended up in California, where he worked to ensure the preservation of Cohn’s records. This story highlights how Jews navigated and transgressed national boundaries in the 19th century and the limitations of the historical narratives that have been constructed from their experiences.
Mothers of Seafaring
(2023)
The article aims to trace the contribution of Jewish women in the Yishuv’s maritime history. Taking the example of Henrietta Diamond, a founding member and chairperson of the Zebulun Seafaring Society, the article seeks to explore the representation and role of women in a growing Jewish maritime domain from the 1930s to the 1950s. It examines Zionist narratives on the ‘New Jew’ and the Jewish body and studies their relevance for the emerging field of maritime activities in the Yishuv. By contextualizing the work and depiction of Henrietta Diamond, the article sheds new light on the gendered notions that underlay the emergence of the Jewish maritime domain and illustrates the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in it.
Nachruf
(2013)
Am 31. Januar, kurz vor einer Vortragsreise nach Israel, erlitt William Hiscott einen Herzinfarkt, fiel ins Koma und verstarb am 6. Februar 2013 im Herzzentrum in Berlin. Damit verloren wir an der Universität Potsdam völlig überraschend einen engagierten und äußerst beliebten Nachwuchsforscher und jungen Kollegen.
Das „Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands“ begann im Jahr 1942 mit dem Projekt „Sicherstellung des historischen und anthropologischen Materials der Judenfriedhöfe in Deutschland“. Die Aufnahme des Projektes und die Anweisung zur fotografischen Friedhofsdokumentation erfolgten vordergründig aufgrund der bevorstehenden Auflassung der jüdischen Friedhöfe im deutschsprachigen Gebiet, eigentlich intendierten die Institutsmitarbeiter aber die systematische genealogisch-demographische, migrationsgeschichtliche und „rassenkundliche“ Erfassung der jüdischen Bevölkerung. Mittels einer fotografischen Dokumentation von Grabsteininschriften sollten diese Vorarbeiten zeitlich ausgeweitet und nunmehr auch die Juden erfasst werden, die vor Einführung der Personenstandsregister in deutschen Territorien lebten und deren Nachkommen auf diese Weise im Sinne der nationalsozialistischen Rassen- und Abstammungspolitik „nachgewiesen“ werden konnten. Dieser Artikel soll dazu beitragen, Kenntnis über erhaltene Dokumente, Korrespondenzen und Fotografien zu erlangen, die in Archiven, Nachlässen oder Sammlungen konserviert bzw. in regional- und lokalgeschichtlichen Aufsätzen verarbeitet wurden und denen bisher keine Aufmerksamkeit als Bestandteil einer überregionalen, auf Reichsebene durchgeführten Aktion beigemessen wurde.
Nichts erzähltes Erzähltes
(2013)
Die normal außergewöhnliche Autobiografie einer Jüdin erzählt von den Jahren nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung. Eine rekonstruktive, sequenzanalytische Untersuchung dieser Autobiografie zeigt den originellen Umgang der Autorin mit ihren Gefühlen während des Erinnerungsaktes ein halbes Jahrhundert nach Kriegsende. Ruth Burghardt fasst ihre Emotionen nicht in Worte, sondern flicht diese mittels nonverbalen Zeichen – Gedankenstrichen und Auslassungspunkten – in ihren Lebensbericht ein. Des Textes individuelle Strukturmerkmale zeigen das Potential des gewählten methodischen Zugangs zu dieser Art von individueller, biografischer Quelle sowie die Bedeutung nonverbaler Anteile schriftlicher Texte. Ein Seitenblick zu den Literaturwissenschaften verweist auf Möglichkeiten methodisch erweiterter Untersuchungen.
Nisters “Nay-gayst”
(2008)
Inhalt: 1. Einleitung 2. Nisters Leben 3. Nister und Mystik 4. Nay-gayst Kontext, Inhalt und Aufbau 5. Biblische und Mystische Traditionen in Nay-gayst 5.1 Bibel 5.2 Apokalypse 5.3 Merkava und Heykhalot-Literatur 5.4 Kabbala 5.5 Chassidismus 6. Der Dichter als Zaddik 6.1 Der Einfluss von Romantik und Symbolismus 6.2 Der Künstler im Werk des Nister 6.3 Der Dichter in Nay-gayst 7. Nay-gayst als poetologisches Manifest 8. Ausblick 8.1 Nay-gayst 8.2 Hoyptshtet 8.3 Lusi Mashbers Rede
In diesem Artikel wird ein vergleichender Einblick in die jüdische Responsen Literatur und in die muslimische Fatwa-Literatur gegeben und herausgearbeitet, welche Fragen sich für weiterführende Studien ergeben. Beide Religionen haben ein normatives Bezugssystem (halacha und fiqh), das sich auf alle Bereiche des Lebens erstreckt. Die klassische Position beider Religionen sieht in der Ausübung dieser Normen den authentischsten Weg, Gottes Willen näherzukommen. Nach traditioneller Auffassung benötigen religiöse Menschen dabei eine permanente Supervision durch vertrauenswürdige Gelehrte, die sie bei Bedarf um Rat bitten können. Die große Zahl der Fragen, die Gelehrten – über das Internet, den Briefverkehr oder das Telefon – gestellt werden, zeigt einen auch in der Gegenwart ungebrochenen Bedarf an fachkundigen Auskünften im Bereich religiöser Normen. Im vorliegenden Artikel sollen die Grundzüge dieses Prozesses religiöser Rechtsauskünfte im Judentum und Islam vergleichend dargestellt werden. Dabei können an dieser Stelle nur die bedeutendsten Momente festgehalten und auf Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede hin betrachtet werden. Als Methode dient die historische Analyse, bei der die Fatwa- und die Responsen-Literatur in ihrer klassischen Form und in Grundzügen dargestellt wird, so wie sie sich vom 7. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert gezeigt hat.
Obituary
(2020)
Bereits in der aufklärerischen Auseinandersetzung um Jesus’ Judentum finden sich Tendenzen, dieses als Ausgangspunkt einer universalisierenden Vermittlung zwischen Judentum und Christentum zu entwerfen, wie auch – zumeist von jüdischer Seite – Einsprüche gegen einen derartigen Universalismus, der entscheidende Differenzen und die Geschichte ausgrenzender Gewalt verleugne. Nach einem kurzen Blick auf den jüdischen Christus bei Heine analysiert der Beitrag Stefan Zweigs im Horizont des Ersten Weltkriegs und zionistischer Debatten entstandenes, 1917 publiziertes Drama „Jeremias“. Die für die Konzeption des Stückes zentrale Überblendung der Prophetenfigur Jeremias mit Christus treibt, so die These, die problematische Logik einer Opferstellvertretung hervor, die mit der Vorstellung einer durch (Opfer-)Blut konstituierten Gemeinschaft die Frage nach der Schuld (Christusmord) auf Andere verschiebt. Demgegenüber entwirft das Stück in Motiven der einbrechenden ‚Schrecknis‘, der Fremdheit im Eigenen, des Exils und der Weltwanderschaft einen anderen Kosmopolitismus.
The birth of the Yishuv’s national shipping company, ZIM was preceded by private enterprise; the sea had not traditionally been a focus of the Zionist movement. In the 1930s, a five-year span of private commercial shipping saw three companies in the Jewish community in Palestine – Palestine Shipping Company, Palestine Maritime Lloyd, and Atid – before shipping was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite their brief lifespans and their negligible contribution to general shipping, these companies constituted an important milestone. Their existence helped shift the Yishuv leadership’s attitudes about shipping’s importance for the community and the need for it to be supported by national institutions.
Preface
(2018)
An academic project of translating the Babylonian Talmud into Japanese was initiated by a president of private jewelry company in 1986 and sixteen volumes of it were published with the collaboration of more than ten Japanese scholars of the Bible and Judaism until 2016. In order to make an assessment for possible impacts of this translation on Japanese cultural revitalization, the author tried to perceive the collision and struggles the Talmud has faced in transmitting itself to later generations even to the present days as it has still claimed its universal validity. It will be helpful to envisage Jewish intellectuals of the subsequent generations wondering what it was to live according to the Torah and the Talmud and how they coped with difficulties in facing the collision of foreign cultural impacts especially in the modern era. As the Japanese people had been profoundly influenced by Buddhism before the modern era, the assumption of the similarity between the Buddhist notion of enlightenment through transmission of the ineffable truth and the similar notion of Rabbinic Judaism will help prospect the possible influence of the Jewish scripture. This Buddhist notion had been most successfully developed in the tradition of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Furthermore this notion was fully and more influentially developed in the sphere of education of Japanese military ruling class and their cultural achievements before the modern era. So we suppose that Jewish endeavors in the Talmudic studies facing collisions and struggles against western impacts will give some insights in considering Japanese struggles against, and responses to, the forceful impacts of the modern West upon our traditional value system.
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.
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.
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.
Regulating public space
(2009)
Schechita und Kaschrut
(2007)
Schutz und Schaden
(2023)
Sepharden auf Wanderschaft
(2013)
750 bis 1.000 türkische Sepharden lebten in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren in Deutschland und bildeten damals die Mehrheit der ersten Migrantengeneration aus der Türkei. In Berlin gründeten sie eine eigene Gemeinde, die bis zur Auslöschung durch die Shoah die größte sephardische Gemeinde in Deutschland war. Trotz ihrer überschaubaren Zahl bildeten diese türkischen Sepharden keineswegs eine homogene Gruppe. Sie unterschieden sich nach Migrationszeitpunkt, sozialem Status sowie nicht zuletzt im Verhältnis zu ihrem Herkunftsland. Der Artikel untersucht die Geschichte dieser Community vor allem als Migrationsgeschichte.
Inhalt: 1. Introduction 2. Summary of the narratives 3. Classification and structure of the narratives 3.1 The Death of R. Johanan's Tenth Son 3.2 The King's Son and His Three False Friends 4. The context of the narratives in Beer Sheva and Glikl's Memoirs 4.1 The context in Beer Sheva 4.2 The context in Glikl's Memoirs 5. Conclusion
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.
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.”
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.
The article explores the pedagogical dimension of contemporary visual art which takes the Holocaust as a main subject of representation. It asks how a work of art can offer a viable alternative to the already existing methods or practices of Holocaust education, whose traditional aim is to endow the apprentice with an ‘absolute knowledge’ of the Holocaust. The article analyzes the characteristics and the effectiveness of a ‘performative’ approach to teaching about the Holocaust, which relies on an element of interaction and on critical self-reflection, by undertaking a close analysis of Your Coloring Book, – an art installation created by Israeli artist and representative of the third generation after the Holocaust, Ram Katzir.
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.
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 issue of determining the time, when the Judaic communities have settled on Romanian land, is one of the most interesting and most delicate details that can be mentioned when talking about this ethnic group. The presence of the first Jewish communities in ancient times on this land was a “taboo” subject during many historical periods until 1989, but even after this year, studies oriented in this direction were more than sketchy. The article does not only bring a surplus of information in this domain, but manages to concentrate – almost didactically – the information and the archaeological proofs known and reknown to the present time. There are depicted material evidences as well as linguistic ones, toponymical and even religious. Also, the author tries to draw a parallel between some layouts of the Dacian state and Dacia Felix, conquered by the Romans, and the presence of some Judaic communities, not very numerous, made out of Judaic population who came together with the Roman conqueror.
The Beruriah Incident
(2014)
The story known as the Beruriah Incident, which appears in Rashi’s commentary on bAvodah Zarah 18b (related to ATU types 920A* and 823A*), describes the failure and tragic end of R. Meir and his wife Beruriah, two tannaic role-models. This article examines the authenticity of the story by tracking the method of distribution in traditional Jewish society before the modern era, and comparing the story’s components with rabbinic literature and international folklore.
The article is a study research that attempts to reconstitute one facet of the Jewish cultural history, represented by the Jewish typographical activity in a geographic and historic context, i.e. North Transylvania at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The core of the study is represented by a detailed research of the typographical activity of Jacov Wieder’s printing house that he had set up in 1897 at Seini, a small locality in the county of Satu Mare. Wieder’s printing house, where some 150 Hebrew book titles were printed, was activated alongside with some other 20 Hebrew printing houses of the same county until 1944. The Hebrew books printed at Seini are thoroughly examined from the point of view of their subject and authors. The high technical quality of the print of Wieder’s printing house and not less the prestige of the authors contributed to its fame and reputation. The books were distributed throughout the world and reached the Jewish communities from countries in the immediate proximity Eastern, Central and Western Europe and even North America and the Land of Israel.
This study deals with the impacts of the Holocaust on the identity of the Jewish community in Slovakia. The author is interested in the question (whether and) in which form God remained among the survivors after Auschwitz. The available ethnological material has shown that suffering during the Holocaust often resulted into abandoning the religion, and particularly in Judaism. Many survivors broke up their contacts with Jewry. They often decided to join the communist party (either due to their conviction or opportunism.) Our research has indicated that for the majority of the Slovak Jews, God after the Holocaust is rather an abstract concept or non existing. However, he is definitely not the biblical God of the Tora and micvot, to which our ancestors used to pray.
Yoel Hoffmann is an Israeli writer born in 1937 in Brasov (Kronstadt), Romania. Brought up in a German-speaking family, already in his first book, Sefer Yosef (1989), he conveys the voice of German-speaking immigrants in Israel (the “Katschen” story, 1986) and that of the East European Jewish community in Berlin in the late 1930s, on the verge of the Second World War. His works are crammed with characters of Jews from Germany gripped by the memory of the language they abandoned following their emigration to Palestine in the 1930s. The classic one is the character of Bernhard, in the eponymous work. The current article focuses on the representation and elaboration of Hoffmann’s unique creation, in a language influenced by his deep identification with Zen Buddhism on the one hand, and his attraction to the modernist, Western style of stream of consciousness on the other. In central sections of his works, Hoffman presents his entire literary corpus as a type of explicit, allusive, or secret Holocaust literature, and invites his readers and his critics to decode the allusions and expose the secret in this theme, a surprising statement in relation to Hoffmann’s work and its analysis so far. Hoffmann represents the Holocaust as a collective Israeli trauma for which his literary fiction creates a special catalogue of representative characters. In the creation of a catalogue, and particularly one that simultaneously classifies and individualizes, Hoffmann’s project resembles the monumental 1920s cataloguing project by the celebrated German photographer August Sander (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts). Hoffmann included photographs from this project in his works, and even chose some of them for the covers of his books. The article examines the implicit relationships between these two creative artists as conferring a meaning so far not considered in the research of the Holocaust theme in Yoel Hoffmann’s writings.
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.
The figure of Moses constitutes an important link between Jewish and Muslim traditions.
Muslims consider him to be one of the five elite prophets of God, his story therefore
has a prominent place in the Qurʼan. While there are minor differences, the story
of Moses found in the Qurʼan confirms the account of the Torah; the life of Moses thus
is considered a model for all Muslims to follow. Though elements of his story are found throughout the Qurʼan, it is in chapter 7 where it is given in its greatest detail. As the
focus point of this article, chapter 7 discusses many events in Mosesʼ life, which are important for both Muslims and Jews, and reveals his great importance and Godliness. It also demonstrates how truly similar Islamʼs Moses and Judaismʼs Moses are. Therefore,
through an examination of the various elements of the story of Moses as found in
the Qurʼan, this article will show how by following him, Jews and Muslims can come
together in friendship, harmony and peace. Moses is the common ground on which
Jews and Muslims can come together in order to open up a dialogue and further their
shared commitment to the worship of the One God.
Jacob Brandon Maduro’s Memoirs and Related Observations (Havana, 1953) speak to the lasting yet malleable legacy of Jewish Caribbean/Atlantic mercantile communities that defined early modern settlement in the Americas. A close reading of the Memoirs, alongside relevant archival records and community narratives, lends new perspectives to scholarship on Port Jewries and the Atlantic Diaspora. Specifically concerned with Jacob’s adoption of such leading intellectual and political tropes as the Monroe doctrine, José Martí’s Nuestra America, and a Zionism that evolved from an ideology to a reality, the Memoirs reveal a narrative at once defined by the tremendous upheavals of the first half of the 20th century, and an enduring sense of Jewish diasporic peoplehood defined through a Port Jew paradigm whereby the preservation of Jewish ethnicity is understood as synonymous with the championing of modernity.
In this article we analyze several examples of the syntactic structure ansí un...(Eng. such a...) apparently calqued from the German expression so ein... that can be found in different Judeo-Spanish texts since the second half of 19th Century. Although the eldest examples appeared in Judeo-Spanish translations of German novels, published in Vienna – what suggests that they could be mere cases derived from a kind of translation too attached to the original –, we can also find more examples in Sephardic texts produced outside the German speaking area (Bosnia, Bulgaria, etc.), not being necessarily translations of a German original. Dealing with all these cases, we will try to trace (and explain) the spread of the ansí un syntactic structure in modern Judeo-Spanish prose.
This article examines Pierre Nora’s concept of memory using the examples of York and Winchester to demonstrate the individuality of local approaches to the memory of medieval Anglo-Jewries. Overall, this paper will highlight how memory can be rescued from a period of prolonged silence and reintegrated back into a wider historical narrative. Conversely it will also examine how in stark contrast to this new attitude of remembering the silence surrounding Jewish memory continues to exist elsewhere. Finally this paper will ask why this silence remains, and question whether Nora’s theory that memory is constantly evolving is applicable to the experiences of Jewish memory in York and Winchester.
In this article we will present a few examples of the theme of “calling for help and redemption” in Arabic and Hebrew poetry, with particular focus on eleventh and twelfth century Muslim Spain. More particularly, we will offer a glimpse into the life and oeuvre of two medieval poets (one Muslim, one Jewish); both were active in Muslim Spain in the same period and shared a similar fate of exile and wandering: on the one hand, the Sicilian Arabic poet Ibn Ḥamdīs (c. 1056–c. 1133) and on the other hand, the Spanish Jewish poet Moses ibn Ezra (1055–1138). We will take into account the impact of exile and wandering on the profusion of the theme of “calling for help and redemption” as well as the related theme of “yearning for one’s homeland” through an analysis and comparison of poetic fragments by the two aforementioned poets as well as additional Andalusian Jewish (Judah ha-Levi) and Muslim (Ibn Khafāja, al-Rundī and Ibn al-Abbār) poets.
Messianic Jews are Jewish individuals who syncretically accept both the messianic character of Jesus and the ritual cultic practices provided by traditional Judaism. The present article examines the emergence of this marginal syncretic movement in contemporary Israel, and maintains that it represents a radical development in the bimillenary history of Jewish-Christian relations. This article offers a general introduction to the notion of Jewish-Christian identity, a brief history of the first group of Messianic Jews in the Land of Israel, the cultural influence and religious syncretism of the Messianic Jews in modern Israel, and, finally, the implication that Messianic Judaism is supposed to become the new paradigm within the various branches of Judaism.
Dieser Aufsatz setzt sich mit der Frage auseinander: „Was ist jüdische Theologie?“. Er untersucht die verschiedenen Perspektiven jüdisch-amerikanischer Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts auf die Definition von jüdischer Theologie, die Bestimmung ihres Inhalts, ihrer Ziele und Methodik. Dabei konzentrieren sich die Betrachtungen insbesondere auf Konzeptionen von Kaufmann Kohler und Eugene B. Borowitz, aber auch auf Arthur Green, Arthur A. Cohen sowie Louis Jacobs. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, die vielfältigen Facetten der Perspektiven auf die Thematik – auch unter Berücksichtigung des historischen Kontextes – zu verdeutlichen und die von den Autoren hervorgehobenen Charakteristika einer jüdischen Theologie zu erörtern. Zudem wird gefragt, ob und in welcher Weise sich ihre inhaltlichen Schwerpunkte und Problemstellungen im Laufe der Jahrzehnte verändert haben.
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.
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.
Anhand von Beispielen aus der sephardischen Presse und aus Übersetzungen von deutschsprachigen Werken wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Orts- und Personennamen aus dem deutschen Sprachraum im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert in das judenspanische Sprach- und Schriftsystem transferiert wurden. Dabei zeigt sich, dass der Ort der Publikation eine entscheidende Rolle spielte. Während in Wiener Publikationen im Allgemeinen die Transkription der Namen gemäß der deutschen Aussprache bevorzugt wird, macht sich in Drucken aus anderen Städten der Einfluss von Mittlersprachen bemerkbar. Mit zunehmender Entfernung und abnehmender Kenntnis der deutschen Sprache und Realität nehmen außerdem die Druckfehler deutlich zu, so dass das Entziffern und Identifizieren von deutschen Namen in judenspanischen Texten zuweilen einem Detektivspiel gleicht.
Vom Handeln und Schmusen
(2017)
Vom Raum zur Geschichte
(2011)
Der Begriff des Ghettos hat eine lange Forschungsgeschichte. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert ihn im Kontext der Historisierung der Lebenswelten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Der Terminus wird im 19. Jahrhundert zum Inbegriff der frühneuzeitlichen Tradition. Im Folgenden werden einige Aspekte der Entstehungsgeschichte dieses Bedeutungswandels analysiert, der auf einer Zivilisierungsdynamik gegenüber den Juden im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert wie der Historisierung der Hebräischen Bibel in der Aufklärung basierte.
Vom Symbol zum Schweigen
(2013)
Die christliche Kabbala des deutschen Humanisten Johannes Reuchlin ist entscheidend von seiner Vorstellung vom Wesen und von der Funktion des Symbols bestimmt. Dieser Beitrag sucht nach dem Ursprung von Reuchlins Symbolbegriff und stellt die These auf, dass Dionysius Pseudo-Areopagitas Bemerkungen über eine symbolica theologia Reuchlins Sicht auf die jüdische Mystik grundlegend beeinflusste. Darüber hinaus wird die Frage diskutiert, ob Reuchlins Idee von einer symbolischen Theologie, die auch in der modernen Forschung fortwirkt, den frühen Kabbalisten tatsächlich gerecht wird, oder ob Reuchlins Rezeption nicht vielmehr einer neuplatonischen Literatur geschuldet ist, die den jüdischen Mystikern überhaupt nicht zugänglich war.
Die Rezeption des Propheten Jona im Koran setzt dessen biblischen Narrativ im Wesentlichen voraus und deutet diesen vor allem dort aus, wo man um eine Korrektur seines Prophetenbildes bemüht ist. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Buße, Umkehr und Erlösung Yūnus’ und seines Volkes. Nachkoranische Prophetenerzählungen (qisas alanbiyā’) füllen die narrativen Leerstellen der ‚Jona-Suren‘ wiederum mit erklärendem Erzählmaterial auf und schöpfen dafür auch aus dem umfangreichen Fundus biblischer und rabbinischer Traditionen, die sie sich im äußeren Rahmen der koranischen Yūnus Überlieferung schöpferisch zu eigen machen. So entstehen Erzählkompositionen, die sich als dialogische Auseinandersetzung mit religiösen Themen von gemeinsamer Relevanz lesen lassen. Der Artikel reflektiert gezielt Entwicklung und Verhältnis der Rezeptionen Jonas im Koran sowie in den Prophetenerzählungen von Ibn-Muhammad at-Ta‛labī und Muhammad ibn ‛Abd Allāh al-Kisā’i, in stetiger Auseinandersetzung mit der jüdischen Jona-Tradition.
Von Budapest nach Straßburg
(2014)
Der ungarische Kantor Marcel (Martón) Lorand trat 1964, von der neologen Großen Synagoge Budapest kommend, die Kantorenstelle an der orthodoxen Synagogue de la Paix in Straßburg an. Dieser Beitrag nähert sich seinem Leben und Wirken über seine Schallplatten-Aufnahmen sowie über Erinnerungen von Zeitgenossen. Am Beispiel Lorands soll betrachtet werden, mit welchen Herausforderungen ein Kantor beim Wechsel von einer Gemeinde in eine andere konfrontiert sein kann. In einer der wichtigsten Gemeindefunktionen, als Leiter des Synagogengottesdienstes, muss ein Kantor flexibel sein und sich an ortsgebundene liturgische Bräuche anpassen können.
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.
What did Cain say to Abel?
(2009)
When Jesus Spoke Yiddish
(2015)
In this paper, I wish to bring some evidences from a Yiddish manuscript of the “Toledot Yeshu” which has not yet been the object of research: MS. Günzburg, 1730 kept in the Russian State Library in Moscow and dated 17th century. The manuscript is part of the so-called ‘Herode-tradition’ of the “Toledot Yeshu”. This means that the Yiddish manuscript is connected to the version printed in Hebrew and accompanied by a Latin translation by the Swiss pastor and theologian Johann Jacob Uldrich (Huldricus, 1683–1731) in Leiden in 1705, bearing the title “Historia Jeschuae Nazareni”. Given the uncertainty about the exact dating of the Yiddish manuscript, a comparison between the Hebrew and the Yiddish can still allow some remarks concerning the characteristics of the Yiddish version and posit some questions about the transmission and the reception of this challenging and intriguing text.
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.
In 1945, Zinovii Shenderovich Tolkatchev (1903–1977), a Soviet artist of Jewish origin, created a striking series of five images entitled “Jesus in Majdanek”. The series was the culmination of Tolkatchev‘s intensive preoccupation with the experience he, as a Red Army soldier, endured upon taking part in liberation of the concentration camps Majdanek and Auschwitz. Shocked by the actual sights he witnessed, he depicted Jesus as an actual camp inmate, wearing a striped uniform marked by every possible defamation sign – the Jewish yellow star, the red triangle of political prisoners, and the individual prison number, the numerical tattoo on his lower arm can also be seen. The different stages of camp life are portrayed as the traditional Passion of Christ. While showing the actual situations the artist based himself upon the well known European Renaissance paintings canonically depicting Jesus‘ suffering. The article places Tolkatchev‘s series in a broader cultural and visual context by exploring the development of the ‘historical Jesus’ in the 19th century European thought and Russian realist art, and by examining the impact of the German avant-garde. By doing so, a deeper understanding of the universal message Tolkatchev’s works entail is offered.
Bereits im 13. Jahrhundert legten die Juden der alten Handelsstadt Frankfurt/Oder ihren Friedhof in der damaligen Dammvorstadt an – und damit ist dieser „Gute Ort“ einer der ältesten jüdischen Begräbnisstätten in Mitteleuropa. Er dokumentiert auf einzigartige Weise sowohl die sehr lange Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden bis zu ihrer gewaltsamen Vernichtung durch die Nazi- Barbarei als auch die des Umgangs der Nachgeborenen mit ihrem Kulturerbe. Der Friedhof, samt Trauerhalle und Gärtnerhäuschen, hatte diesen Weltkrieg im Wesentlichen unbeschadet überstanden.
Der Beitrag widmet sich dem Genre der „galizischen“ Ghettogeschichte und bezieht sich auf Nathan Samuelys zweibändige Cultur-Bilder aus dem jüdischen Leben in Galizien (1885 und 1892) und auf Karl Emil Franzos’ Novellenzyklus Die Juden von Barnow (1877) sowie stellenweise auf ausgewählte Texte aus Franzos’ Band Aus Halb-Asien. Culturbilder aus Galizien, der Bukowina, Südrußland und Rumänien (1876). Durchgeführt wird eine punktuelle Analyse der literarischen Typologie und der Handlungsräume in den genannten Texten, wobei die Ghettogeschichten in ihrer Gesamtheit als ein komplexes soziokulturelles Konstrukt einer Mikrogesellschaft problematisiert werden.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden einige zentrale Berichte und Motive aus den frühen Quellen des Islam über die militärischen Konflikte des Propheten Muhammad mit den
Juden von Medina beleuchtet. Als Grundlage der Untersuchung dient die Prophetenbiografie des Gelehrten Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (gest. 150 nach der Hedschra), die auch heute noch maßgeblich ist. Im Beitrag wird unter anderem aufgezeigt, dass es sowohl innerhalb der Gattung der Sīra-Literatur, der Ibn Isḥāqs Werk angehört, als auch in den frühen Traditionen der islamischen Rechtswissenschaft, der Koranexegese sowie im Korantext selbst zahlreiche Hinweise auf alternative Darstellungen dieser Konflikte gibt. Diese gerieten in den ersten Jahrhunderten des Islam infolge des Siegeszuges von Ibn Isḥāqs Werk zunehmend aus dem Blickfeld, sind aber für zeitgenössische Diskurse um das Verhältnis des Islam zu Nichtmuslimen durchaus von Interesse. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es die normative Aussagekraft der unterschiedlichen Szenarien für Grundsatzfragen insbesondere für das Verhältnis zwischen Muslimen und Juden herauszuarbeiten. Einen inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt im Beitrag bilden dabei unterschiedliche Zugänge zum berühmten Bericht über die Vernichtung des jüdischen Stammes der Banū Qurayza im Anschluss an die Grabenschlacht.
After the mass immigration to Israel from 1948 to 1950, about 2000 Jews remained
in Yemen. These Jews lived in small communities and continued to maintain their
religious environment as it was. In the years that followed, many of them, however, moved from Yemen to Israel with the assistance of the Jewish Agency and the Joint
Distribution Committee (JDC). The community was of a small size and the fact that it
was dispersed throughout the predominantly Muslim areas, created a certain closeness
between the two groups. About ten percent of the Jews chose to convert to Islam, many
of them in groups. In about twenty cases, the husbands chose to convert to Islam while
their wives emigrated to preserve their Judaism. Some of the converts refused to grant
their wives a divorce, because, according to Muslim law, conversion is enough to sever
the marital relationship. This procedure is called ʿAgunot. Meaning, women bound in
marriage to a husband and they no longer lived together, but the husband didn’t formally
‘released’ her from marriage union. The article follows the efforts undertaken
to release the ʿAgunot, and shows that Jewish and Muslim scholars were able to find
solutions to the ʿAgunot problem and, at times, managed to bridge the gap between the
two religions.
‚Maise Jeschurun‘
(2023)
‚Ma‘oz tsur jeshu‘ati‘
(2017)
“Creating a Maritime Future”
(2023)
This article explores the importance of the port city of Hamburg in the evolving discourses on the creation of a maritime future, a vision which became influential in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. While some Jewish representatives in the city aimed at preserving and intertwining Hanseatic and Jewish traditions in order to secure a Jewish presence in the port city under the pressure of the Nazi regime and thereafter, others wanted to create new emigration opportunities, especially to Mandatory Palestine, and create a Jewish maritime future in Eretz Israel. Different Zionist organizations supported the newly evolving maritime ideas, such as the “conquest of the sea”, and promoted the image of a Jewish seafaring nation. Despite the difficulties in the 1940s, these concepts gained influence post-1945 and led to the foundation of the fishery kibbutz “Zerubavel” in Blankenese/Hamburg. However, the idea of a Hanseatic Jewish future also remained influential and illustrates how differently a “Jewish maritime future” was imagined and used to link past, present and future.
“Israel am Meere”
(2023)
For Jews in Germany, the period following the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933 was a period of decision-making on many levels: How should they respond to the persecution? If they decided to emigrate, many more decisions had to be made: How does one leave a country, and where should one go? A key moment in the process and in the cultural practice of emigration is the beginning of the sea voyage – when the need for departure and the hope for a new arrival jointly create a period of liminality. Looking at reports from sea voyages of exploration and emigration from the 1930s, this contribution discusses the question whether, and in what ways, such reflections can be read in the context of religious experiences and in the search for Jewish identities in times of turmoil.
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.
This paper explores questions surrounding corporeality and heavenly ascent, in texts ranging from 1 Enoch to the Hekhalot literature, including Philo’s works. It examines both descriptions of the heavenly realms and accounts of the ascent process. Despite his Platonic apophaticism, Philo superimposes cosmological and spiritual heavens, and draws upon the biblical imagery of dazzling glory. Although they do not express themselves in philosophical language, the heavenly ascent texts make it clear that human beings cannot ascend to heaven in their earthly bodies, and that God cannot be seen with terrestrial eyes. In terms of ideas they are not so far from the philosopher Philo as might at first appear.
Inhalt: Die Entstehung des Theaterensemble GOSET Der Umzug nach Moskau Marc Chagall als Bühnenbildner Einführung in das Jüdische Theater GOSET in Berlin Das Repertoire in Berlin von April bis Mai 1928 Die Presse und ihre Kritiken Granovskys Weggang und das Ende von GOSET Alexander Granovskys Artikel in den literarishen bletern
Während des Ersten Weltkrieges kam der deutsche Dramatiker und Erzähler Alfred Brust mit dem chassidischen Judentum im litauischen Kowno und Wilna in Berührung. So wie Sammy Gronemann, Arnold Zweig und andere Autoren, die in der Zensur- Abteilung von ‚Ober Ost‘ beschäftigt waren, war Brust tief beeindruckt von dessen archaischer Kultur. Diese schien ihm im Gegensatz zur Dekadenz der modernen Welt zu stehen. Beeinflusst vom expressionistischen Topos einer inneren Wandlung des Menschen entwickelte er in den folgenden Jahren die Idee einer Translation spiritueller und moralischer Werte von den osteuropäischen Juden auf die (deutschen) Ostpreußen. Für ihn galt: Die „Juden sind der Adel der Bewegung“. Brust stand in Kontakt mit Richard Dehmel, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Florens Christian Rang und Martin Buber, selbst Walter Benjamin war zeitweise an ihm interessiert.
Der deutsch-jüdische Dichter und Anarchist Erich Mühsam (1878–1934) rekurrierte in seinem schriftstellerischen OEuvre wiederholt auf die Figur Jesus’. Im Versuch, diese Beziehungsgeschichte zu rekonstruieren und zu deuten, rücken Einflussgeber aus dem Umfeld der literarischen Avantgarde Berlins sowie der Lebensreformbewegung in den Blick. In einer Verschränkung von quasireligiöser Renaissance und Aufbruchstimmung hin zum ‚Neuen Menschen‘ war Jesus in diesen Zirkeln um die Jahrhundertwende ein beliebtes Motiv und prägte sich, vermittelt über Freundschaften und Wegmarken, auch in Mühsams Schreiben ein. Neben Kain ist es Jesus, der bei Mühsam zur den fünften Stand revolutionierenden Lichtgestalt wird. In diese Bezugnahme spielen Mühsams konfliktreiches Verhältnis zu seinem Vater und dessen Assimilation an das deutsche Bürgertum mit hinein, das keineswegs gänzlich jene aufgeklärten Werte lebte, auf die es sich nominell berief: Statt Freiheit und Gleichheit prävalierten neue Zwänge, Begrenzungen und Ressentiments, wie Mühsam bemerkte. Über Gustav Landauer fand er nicht nur zum Anarchismus, sondern auch zu einer neuen Sprache für die verschüttete Tradition und prägte hierüber seiner Jesusfigur sein Verständnis eines rebellischen Judentums ein, das Mühsam selbst als Revolutionär verkörperte.
Die Worte „entjuden“ und „Entjudung“ sind sprachlicher Ausdruck zumeist judenfeindlicher Haltungen und Taten in der deutschen Geschichte. Der Beitrag zeichnet die Entwicklung des Begriffs anhand seiner Verwendungszusammenhänge nach. Im Kontext der Assimilation des beginnenden 19. Jahrhunderts meinte der Terminus, dass man sich jener jüdischen „Eigenheit“ zu entkleiden habe, welche als Postulat gemeinhin Konsens war. Innerhalb der innerjüdischen Diskussion wird „Entjudung“ zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zum diagnostischen Ausdruck des Identitätsverlustes. Als politischer Kampfbegriff der Nationalsozialisten ist er wiederum zum Synonym für die Entrechtung und Vernichtung jüdischer Menschen geworden. Protestantische Theologen verwendeten diesen Begriff in der Debatte um die Erneuerung des Christentums, was durch die Entfernung jüdischer Einflüsse geschehen sollte. Bereits Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts formuliert, findet diese Forderung in der 1939 erfolgten Gründung des Instituts zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben seine programmatische Umsetzung.
„Gelobt seist du, Ewiger!“
(2017)
Das „Gesetz zur Zahlbarmachung von Renten aus Beschäftigungen in einem Ghetto” (ZRBG) aus dem Jahre 2002 machte es erforderlich, das Phänomen und den im Gesetz verwendeten Begriff „Ghetto“ juristisch einer eindeutigen Klärung zuzuführen. Die hierbei aufgetretenen Fragen und Probleme sollen nachfolgend dargestellt werden.
„Sei es Dein Wille, Herr“
(2017)