Volume 10, Issue 2 -

This article reviews a corpus of poems retelling the Binding of Isaac composed by Ashkenazic Jews (mainly from the German territories) during the Middle Ages and early modern era. The poems, written in both languages of the Ashkenazim – the vernacular Yiddish and the literary Hebrew – are: Akeda Piyyutim , some 40 liturgical penitentiary poems written in Hebrew, and Yudisher Shtam , an epic poem written in Yiddish, of which an unusually extensive number of copies survived. These Hebrew poems and the Yiddish poem have been – independently from one another – the subject of thorough research. However, no comparison of the two corpora has ever been done. The present paper offers such a comparison, thus illuminating key cultural-historical aspects of pre-modern Ashkenazic society, including cultural transfer between co-territorial Jews and Christians; Hebrew versus Yiddish texts; ritual versus belletristic literature; written versus oral transmission; elite (educated) versus lay audiences; male versus female audiences; and the private versus the public sphere. The article identifies similarities in both form and content between the poems in the two languages. For example, they both employ a similar stanzaic form; they both describe the exemplary behavior of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah in a sentimental tone; and they both make contemporary references within the classic narrative to Christianity as a persecuting religion. The differences between the two corpora relate also to both form and content. For instance, the Hebrew poems are much shorter than the Yiddish poem, and they reflect a deeper familiarity with classical Jewish sources and are more stylistically refined, while the Yiddish poem is more belletristic and conveys the influence of the medieval German epic. Also, whereas the Hebrew Piyyutim were contained in Maḥzorim used in the synagogue, there is no certainty as to the intended purpose of Yudisher Shtam . By identifying the differences and similarities between the two corpora, as well as their possible meanings and implications, the article sheds light on an interesting case in the history of the Jews in the German territories involving cultural exchange, cultural identity, and literary tradition.

This article has two goals: first, it aims to solve a mystery in Yiddish studies by identifying the previously unknown author of one of the earliest Eastern European modern literary texts in Yiddish, and reconstructing the historical context in which he wrote the text. Second, it will show how this archival-biographical discovery sheds new light on the history of Eastern European Jews during the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) as well as on the rise of Haskalah literature. Finally, as the title of this article suggests, I will argue that there was a direct link between narration and denunciation, between the Austrian imperial interest in collecting insider information about the Jews and the turn to writing literature in Jewish languages.

This article has two aims: it seeks, first, to explore the German reception and translational context for Yiddish literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And second, it seeks to explore the problem of recognition in relation to this literary reception. In so doing, it responds to ongoing disputes around the translation of Yiddish literature into German. A standard practice in such disputes is to attack the widely read translations of Alexander Eliasberg in terms that tend to echo the young Gershom Scholem’s own attack of 1917. By exploring the German translational and reception context to which these translations responded, this article seeks a different approach. It does so by asking: what kind of recognition – whether understood as knowledge or acknowledgement – were critics and translators able to bestow on Yiddish literature? Focusing on the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums (1837–1922), one of the first German venues for criticism and translation of modern Yiddish literature, this article argues that the AZJ’s contributors recognized the Yiddish writings of Sholem Asch, Sholem Aleichem, and especially I. L. Peretz as a form of “ghetto writing.” In doing so, they made possible the reception of Yiddish literature in German but also imposed strict limitations on how it was meant to be read, hence resulting in misrecognition. This misrecognition, in turn, raises questions about the capacity of this reception to produce the kind of “clarifying self-scrutiny” that cultural theorist Rita Felski finds to be among the central aims of modern writers and readers of fiction. It also results in a largely reduced ability to recognize the kind of exploration of the shtetl, with its metaphors and what Dan Miron calls its “metaphysics and mythological self-projection,” that Yiddish writers engaged in.

Towards the end of the Second World War, as a German defeat seemed inevitable, the Allied powers began searching for a postwar policy that would prevent the resurgence of Germany as a hostile military power in Central Europe. Instead of material destruction, the British preferred to tackle the German mind. As a means of achieving the objectives of ‘Denazification,’ the British launched a large scale plan for political re-education of the German people. The plan included a pioneering program for German Prisoners of War held in dispersed British captivity camps. In charge of executing the program in one such camp, located alongside the Suez Canal, was a German-Jewish refugee named Adolf Sindler. His service as a ‘Training Adviser’ began in early 1946 and lasted for two years. Sindler’s leadership in the camp created some of the earliest, and perhaps most unusual, encounters of the immediate postwar period between German soldiers, some of whom were still ardent Nazis, and German-Jews, in this case, one who was in charge of their mental rehabilitation. Sindler was provided constant support by a group of German-speaking socialist émigrés who had found shelter in Palestine. This paper explores how this historical case study informs our understanding of the inner-Jewish dialogue concerning the involvement of émigrés in the moral reconstruction of their former society. In addition, it seeks to contribute to our knowledge of the nature of operations during the early stages of the pretentious British re-education plan.

Das Franz Rosenzweig, Brief an Margrit Rosenstock vom 21. August 1919, in: The „Gritli“ Letters (1914–1929) [GL], übertr. von Ulrike von Moltke, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Fund (http://www.erhfund.org/the-gritli-letters-gritli-briefe). Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes besteht darin, die Hegel’sche Abstammung bestimmter Aspekte des dritten Teils des Sterns der Erlösung Franz Rosenzweigs zu analysieren. Dazu verfahre ich im ersten Teil biografisch und versuche, den Wert von Hegel und der Staat im Leben seines Autors wiederherzustellen. In diesem Sinne hinterfrage ich Nahum N. Glatzers Biografie von Rosenzweig sowie den Ausschluss der sogenannten „Gritli“-Briefe aus der von Edith Rosenzweig für ihre Veröffentlichung ausgewählten Korrespondenz ihres Ehemannes, in welchen die positivsten Äuβerungen Rosenzweigs zu seinem Hegelbuch zu finden sind. Im zweiten Teil berücksichtige ich die Wirkungsgeschichte von Hegel und der Staat im Rahmen der Hegel-Forschung vom Erscheinen des Werkes bis in die 1970er Jahre. Damit versuche ich zu beweisen, dass das Hegelbuch Rosenzweigs eine bedeutende Wirkung hatte, bevor die Rosenzweig-Experten dieses Werk zu untersuchen begannen. Auβerdem zeigt die Betrachtung dieser ersten Rezeption vom Hegelbuch Rosenzweigs, dass die in ihm dargestellte theologisch-politische Andeutung des Verhältnisses von Vernünftigkeit und Wirklichkeit bei Hegel immer eine wichtige Rolle spielte. Am Ende der Arbeit verbinde ich diese Andeutung mit dem christlichen Weg zur Erlösung als Ergänzung des jüdischen noch-nicht-geschehenen Ereignisses der Versöhnung bei Rosenzweig. Damit wird beleuchtet, dass Rosenzweig und Hegel darin übereinstimmen, dass das Problem der Neuzeit in der Entzweiung besteht bzw. dass sie der gleichen Frage entgegentraten, und zwar aus sehr ähnlichen geistigen Entwicklungen, nämlich aus einer existenziellen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Gnostizismus.

Der vorliegende Aufsatz stellt einen bis dato unveröffentlichten Brief vor, den Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) seinem Vetter Rudolf Ehrenberg (1884–1969) schickte. Das Dokument, das aus einer vom jungen Hegel erzählten Geschichte der neueren Umwandlung der Gottesidee besteht, ist überaus bedeutsam, denn es wirft ein Licht auf Rosenzweigs intellektuelle Biografie und deckt eine Lebensstation des Autors des Sterns der Erlösung auf, in der er einen marcionitischen Standpunkt beziehungsweise eine Theologie der Weltentsagung verteidigte. Die Einleitung zeigt die Hauptquellen von Rosenzweigs Text auf und bezieht ihn auf die Auseinandersetzung mit Hegels Frühphilosophie in seinen jungen Jahren.