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A History of German Jewish Bible Translation
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2018
About this book
Between 1780 and 1937, Jews in Germany produced numerous new translations of the Hebrew Bible into German. Intended for Jews who were trilingual, reading Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, they were meant less for religious use than to promote educational and cultural goals. Not only did translations give Jews vernacular access to their scripture without Christian intervention, but they also helped showcase the Hebrew Bible as a work of literature and the foundational text of modern Jewish identity.
This book is the first in English to offer a close analysis of German Jewish translations as part of a larger cultural project. Looking at four distinct waves of translations, Abigail Gillman juxtaposes translations within each that sought to achieve similar goals through differing means. As she details the history of successive translations, we gain new insight into the opportunities and problems the Bible posed for different generations and gain a new perspective on modern German Jewish history.
This book is the first in English to offer a close analysis of German Jewish translations as part of a larger cultural project. Looking at four distinct waves of translations, Abigail Gillman juxtaposes translations within each that sought to achieve similar goals through differing means. As she details the history of successive translations, we gain new insight into the opportunities and problems the Bible posed for different generations and gain a new perspective on modern German Jewish history.
Author / Editor information
Abigail Gillman is associate professor of Hebrew, German, and comparative literature at Boston University and the acting director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. She is the author of Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and
Schnitzler.
Schnitzler.
Reviews
“A History of German Jewish Bible Translation is important because the subject of Bible translations is a key to the mentalité of German Jewry since Moses Mendelssohn. With a novel handle on a complex body of literature, Professor Gillman has crafted an original conceptual grid to overcome the atomized character of eleven distinct translations that, until now, have defied treatment by a single scholar. Gillman’s goal is not to discuss all translations, but rather to highlight the endless effort by German Jews to cultivate their religious identity in a Christian body politic deeply ambivalent about their integration.”
— Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary“Abigail Gillman’s work is a major scholarly achievement, indeed probably the most comprehensive study to date of the 170-year tradition of Jewish Bible translations into German. Gillman’s history is at the same time an important contribution to our understanding of the unique German-Jewish encounter in modernity, that is, of the philosophical, literary, cultural, and linguistic junction that brought to the world the likes of Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Else Lasker-Schüler, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan, to name only a few luminaries. I am hard pressed to think of another book that brings together such a thorough consideration of Biblical translation across languages and cultures.”
— Amir Eshel, Stanford University"Abigail Gilman’s…is the first full-fledged book to offer a history of German Jewish bible translation as a whole…Gillman’s discussion seems to leave little untouched: from comparative textual analysis, through the paratextual level of introductions, commentary, and visual aspects, on to the biographies of the translator, their cultural environment, both Jewish and (too often neglected in previous studies) Christian, up to the contemporary reception and later legacies."
— Ran HaCohen, Shofar“…without doubt one of the most learned and eloquent books in her interdisciplinary field and one of the most profound reflections on the Jewish encounter with modernity. It is a multi-layered book that will excite the novice and the expert alike, and that will speak to us for time to come. Finally, it is a book that resembles an intricate work of art deserving nothing less than the title of a masterpiece.”
— Asher D. Biemann, The German Quarterly"In this fascinating book Gillman provides the first comprehensive overview of this phenomenon in English, tracing the development of the translations in the context of the Haskalah, Science of Judaism, modern Jewish denominations, and modernist aesthetics. . . . The book can be highly recommended to anyone interested in the reception of the Bible and in German Jewish history and culture."
— Journal of Modern Jewish StudiesTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
ix -
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Preface
xiii -
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List of Abbreviations
xxiii -
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Introduction: The German Jewish Bible in Context
1 -
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1. The First Wave: Jewish Enlightenment Bibles in Yiddish and German
15 -
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2. The Second Wave: Emergence of a Bible Industry
86 -
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3. The Third Wave: The Bible as Gesamtkunstwerk
144 -
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4. The Fourth Wave: Reimagining the German Jewish Bible
197 -
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Epilogue: Ma shemo? The Name of God in the German Jewish Bible
251 -
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Acknowledgments
263 -
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Notes
267 -
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Bibliography
303 -
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Index
321
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 21, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780226477862
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226477862
Keywords for this book
old testament; jewish sacred writings; german literary criticism; religion; religious writing; scripture; new translations; hebrew bible; yiddish; language; european history; culture; education; christian intervention; identity; cultural project; modern germany; translating; judaism; enlightenment; witzenhausen bibles; mendelssohn; jehuda halevi; biblical poetry; female moses; gesamtkunstwerk; joseph johlson; leopold zunz; methodology
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
