Volume 25, Issue 2

Dani Karavans Denkmal »Passagen«, das sich im spanischen Portbou befindet, ist der vielleicht bedeutendste jüdische Ort in Europa. Diese provokante Feststellung dient als Ausgangspunkt für die Beschäftigung mit der Frage, was einen Ort in Europa heutzutage zu einem jüdischen macht. An Hand einer Analyse des Gedenkortes in Portbou werden die Konzepte »jüdischer Ort«, »jüdischer Raum«, »jüdisches Erbe«, und das »virtuell« Jüdische untersucht. Orte und Identitäten ergeben sich aus den komplexen Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Individuen und Gemeinschaften; wobei beide einem zeitlichen Wandel unterliegen. In Anbetracht der jüngsten Angriffe auf jüdische Orte und jüdische Personen in Ländern wie Dänemark, Frankreich oder Belgien diskutiert der Artikel die Bedeutung von Europas jüdischen Orten.

In 1945, Warsaw’s prewar Jewish district, Muranów, lay in ruins. Almost no physical sites of Warsaw’s once rich Jewish history remained standing after the Holocaust. How have the residents of Warsaw – mostly non-Jews – dealt with the memories of this obliterated and ruined space? This article discusses from 1945 to the present several important attempts among largely non-Jewish Poles to remember and reflect upon the history of Warsaw’s Jewish past in the district of Muranów. Even though the tendency has in general been to forget, efforts to remember the Nazi past have surfaced during the last decades. The essay therefore suggests that the postwar history of memory in Warsaw may be thought of not in linear terms but rather in terms of multiple layers of memories that interact in complex ways over time.

In den letzten Jahren haben sich in den Niederlanden neue Praktiken des Holocaust-Gedenkens etabliert. Dies gilt sowohl für die analoge als auch für die digitale Welt. Ein frühes derartiges Projekt war etwa das digitale »Denkmal der jüdischen Gemeinden in den Niederlanden«. Dabei handelt es sich um eine umfang reiche Datenbank mit Informationen zu Namen, den letzten Wohnorten sowie Daten der Verhaftung und Deportation der niederländischen Holocaust-Opfer. Um den Verlust sichtbar zu machen, wird am 4. Mai, dem jährlichen Gedenktag für die Toten des Zweiten Weltkrieges, an Häusern und Wohnungen mit Plakaten an die einstigen jüdischen Bewohner erinnert. In einigen Häusern finden Veranstaltungen statt, so berichten etwa Überlebende über das jüdische Leben von vor, während und nach dem Holocaust. Dieses Projekt wird als Ausdruck einer sich wandelnden Erinnerungskultur untersucht.

What happens if Jewish history is declared »Jewish heritage«? All over Europe remnants of historical Jewish sites are (described and) advertised as tourist attractions promising an authentic experience of the past. The Spanish town of Toledo with its historic synagogue buildings and its Sephardic Museum is but one example of this new trend. In Toledo, places, memory, and the marketing of Jewish history are strongly interconnected. This article reflects on the importance of geographic sites in turning heritage into something visible and »visitable«. Historical traces materialize memory, while at the same time the label »Jewish heritage« weaves them into major narratives and thereby increases their popularity.

Seitdem messianische Juden in der portugiesischen Provinzstadt Belmonte die Rückkehr zum Judentum propagieren und für den Tourismus vermarkten, sind ihre »geheimen Riten« öffentlich, und das marranische Judentum mit seinen Riten und Traditionen zwischen Christus und Moses ist nicht mehr die wahre Religion.

In addition to being witnesses of a vanished past, ruins refer to the former building and tell the story of its destruction. Two ruins, which can also be described as memorial sites, can exemplify different strategies of dealing with these material remnants: the destroyed synagogue of Worms and the St Nikolai Church in Hamburg. The destroyed synagogue of Worms was rebuilt as a symbol of the history of the Jewish community prior to 1933 and as a memorial to the Holocaust. In contrast, the St Nikolai Church in Hamburg was left in ruins which constitute a memorial for the air raids as well as a reminder of the Nazi crimes. The following article will reflect on these different strategies and on the reactions and perceptions of the visitors. Furthermore it will try to reveal the different levels of meaning and the interconnectedness of the memories of the German-Jewish past, the Second World War and the Holocaust.

At a first glance the relationships between Gershom Scholem and Oskar Goldberg or Erich Unger seem to be meaningless. However, from 1921 to 1979, Scholem was frequently confronted with both. He was hostile towards Goldberg who was better known in Berlin in the twentieth century than he was himself. He insulted him in a letter to a mistress of Erich Engel’s, who was a friend of Erich Unger. By doing so Scholem could be sure that Goldberg would read it. He took Goldberg for a cabbalist, but Goldberg firmly denied this. Unger wrote an essay criticising the idea of cabbala supported by Scholem, but it was not published. After the death of Oskar Goldberg Scholem wrote about him in the Encyclopaedia Judaica even though he rejected Goldberg’s theories, but he was unable to describe him adequately. In 1977 Scholem placed Goldberg on a par with leading scholars by listing the Warburg-circle, the Institute for Social Science and the Oskar Goldberg group as the most important ›Jewish sects‹. In the same year he wrote in a letter that Goldberg was, regarding the cabbala-research, »in some way the exact opposite to what I was doing«. Against the background of this very tense relationship it obviously is very unfortunate that a discussion between Scholem and Goldberg about cabbala never happened.

Elchanan Henle Kirchhan, author of the well-known ethical work Simchat ha-Nefesh , was born in 1666 as the seventh of twelve children in the Hessian town of Kirchhain near Marburg. Based on their family tree, drawn up in Hebrew letters in Hildesheim in 1812, this article follows biographical traces of his family members. It analyses the economic, spiritual and social rank of the large family within the Jewish society. The study reveals the position of many family members as leaders (Vorsteher, Parnassim) not only of the Hessian territorial Jewry (Landjudenschaft) but also of important Jewish urban communities like Halberstadt and Hildesheim during the seventeenth and eighteenth century and shows the family’s trans-regional relations. Accordingly, this article argues the Parnassim to be a »political elite« with a separate social rank, similar to the rabbinic and economic elites, within the Jewish society of their time.