Volume 30, Issue 2 - Jubiläumsheft »30 Jahre Aschkenas«

The cultural-religious profile of Ashkenazi Judaism is, compared to Sephardic Judaism, mostly portrayed as stereotypically focused on studying the Talmud and discussing the Halacha. While Sephardic Judaism, and before that also Oriental Judaism, produced a rich philosophy and mystical literatures in the form of the Kabbalah, in Ashkenaz one usually tends to see the yeshiva with its merely few spiritual and theological-philosophical interests. In contrast to this common image, it should be pointed out here that in Ashkenazi Judaism there were quite a few outstanding Halacha scholars such as El’asar from Worms, the Maharal from Prague, Moses Isserles and Ḥajjim Woloshyner who created the theological foundation for the fulfillment of the commandments and the study of the Torah, who subsequently became the paradigm for Ashkenazi Orthodoxy.

This study analyzes the formulation »Jews and (other) merchants« as it appears in sources from the 9 th to the early 11 th centuries. It addresses Michael Toch’s thesis with an aim to clarify the historical meaning of such formulations. By doing so, this study sheds light on how specific social differences between Jewish and non-Jewish merchants arose, while economic activities among both groups remained the same. Both Jews and non-Jews traded in the whole Frankish Empire and beyond. Both groups, therefore, took part in the lucrative as well as extensive slave trade, which was an essential element of the long-distance trading of the early Middle Ages.

Jews from the upper county of Katzenelnbogen, the southern part of the landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt ruled by George II, were placed in an almost hopeless situation by the passage of Swedish troops in November and December 1631. The Lutheran landgrave associated with the Catholic Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II had to bow to the demand of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden to hand over the fortress of Rüsselsheim am Main to him to secure his campaign. The neutrality negotiated for this purpose was intended to keep the upper county out of the war, but instead led to the fact that the landgrave’s territory was now used by both warring parties for troop movements such as quartering, in many cases at the expense of the Jews living there and confronted with contributions and ransom demands. Although the landgrave insisted on the active exercise of his Judenregal and his protective rights, which he regarded as part of national sovereignty in accordance with contemporary legal doctrine, in order to stabilize his sovereignty, he could only imperfectly exercise protection upon his Jews. He was not interested in the welfare of the country’s Jewry, whose rights he granted only very restrictively, but in the legal constitution and consolidation of his sovereignty. To this end, the Jews were instrumentalized and became objects of his political goals. Under these circumstances, an independently acting Jewish community could hardly develop.

This article surveys three centuries of rabbinic culture in Schnaittach (Central Franconia) on the basis of unexplored Hebrew sources. Located in an enclave within the Nuremberg territory, the Schnaittach rabbinate served four rural communities and variously exerted jurisdiction over large areas of Franconia, Upper Palatinate, and Bavaria. As a provincial authority, the rabbinate was oriented toward the political centers in Amberg, Munich, and Vienna, as well as toward the Jewish hubs of Fürth and Frankfurt. The rabbis of Schnaittach produced literary works in the fields of responsa and homiletics that this study contextualizes within a multilevel network of social relations. Early modern rabbis interacted with local tribunals, Christian theologians, Jewish fellow scholars, and migrant students while guiding rural Jews in their daily lives. Several documents show how they mediated, jointly with their wives, in issues of marital sexuality and cared for the female space that was the ritual bath.

Das Thema »Bildung« besitzt zentrale Bedeutung für das jüdische Bürgertum in Deutschland. Der ideenhistorisch inspirierte Essay erörtert das Selbstverständnis deutsch-jüdischer Intellektueller im späten Kaiserreich. Der außergewöhnliche Erfolg von Juden in den staatlichen Bildungsinstitutionen wird zuerst vor dem Hintergrund seiner sozialen und kulturellen Voraussetzungen beleuchtet. Alsdann geht es um den jüdischen Beitrag zur Ideenwelt des Fin de Siècle, wobei die unterschiedlichen Auffassungen von Zionisten und liberalen Juden im Mittelpunkt der Darstellung stehen. Das knappe Fazit zeigt die Konsequenzen, welche die Hochschätzung der Bildung für deutsche Juden mit sich brachte.

Die Frage nach der Zukunft der Judaistik ruft uns dazu auf, den Nachlass , die Überbleibsel der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, auf die Frage nach den verborgenen, unerfüllten Potentialen ihrer Schriften anzusprechen. Die Frage nach der Zukunft unserer Studien impliziert nicht nur eine Bewegung vorwärts, sondern auch einen »Rückschritt« in die Verborgenheit der Tradition, d. h. in das, was übrig geblieben, verborgen ist. Sie nimmt uns mit auf einen langen Lernweg, der auch Umwege, Aussetzungen, Wiederholungen und Fluchtwege beinhaltet. Der vorliegende Aufsatz schlägt eine kurze Expedition in das Feld der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur vor, indem drei »Fallstudien« betrachtet werden: Franz Kafkas unvollendeter Roman Der Prozess , Else Lasker-Schülers orientalische Prosa und Erich Auerbachs Essay »Figura«. Hauptanliegen des Essays ist es, eine Neuorientierung auf diesem Gebiet anzubieten und die vergangenen Formen jüdischer Schriften als Potential für futuristische Erfahrungen zu verwerten, bei denen die orientalischen (östlichen) Ressourcen des jüdischen Literaturbetriebs nicht vernachlässigt werden, und sogar die Möglichkeit einer neuen Landkarte der Leserschaft, genannt »Eurasien«, aufzuzeigen.

The important role of Jewish medical practitioners in medieval and early modern Aschkenas has been underlined time and again. Regardless of legal restrictions and anti-Jewish polemics Jewish physicians were highly appreciated by Christian patients. However, although sources are rather scare, there were also Jewish patients who consulted Christian doctors. Practice records of the Nuremberg physician Johann Christoph Götz (1688–1733) and letters of his contemporary Christoph Jacob Trew (1695–1769) indicate that Jewish children, women and men from nearby Fürth asked for medical advice or treatment. The documents bear witness to a vivid exchange of ideas between Trew and the Jewish physician Wolf Enoch Levin from Fürth in the age of Enligthment. In ambiguous and difficult cases, Wolf often addressed himself to Trew as intermediary for his sick coreligionists.

How does a Lutheran church behave towards Jews when its tradition cultivates deep-seated hatred of Jews, but sees the theological task of missionizing them to Christianity? Using the example of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg, the essay tries to understand how the relationship with Judaism developed during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. In the Nazi era, the church welcomed racist anti-Semitism, but did not introduce the »Aryan paragraph« in the church. She partially and only secretly fulfilled her duty to protect baptized Jews and their descendants as church members. It was only in the 1950s that a changed attitude towards Judaism began and for the first time there started a dialogue.