Europäisch-jüdische Studien – Beiträge

There is a dogged idea that the stereotypical association of Jews with greed, wealth, and usury has to do with their supposed role in the premodern money market. Instead, this study examines the Christian ideas of sinful greed, Jewish materialism, and the role of the traitor’s reward in the "murder of God," which together condensed into the image of the "Geldjude" – "money Jew" – during the socioeconomic upheavals of the High Middle Ages.

In the spring of 1933, Yugoslav Jewish communities founded several local aid committees for Jewish refugees from Germany. Very soon, the Zionist-led Zagreb local committee took over the management and organisation of all refugee help. Its staff built up connections with Jewish organisations at home and abroad. However, contacts with the HICEM and the AJDC in Paris proved to be decisive. The nerve-wracking refugee work often led to battles over the distribution of funds, Palestine certificates, legal travel documents and safe escape routes.

What did the aid measures of the local committees actually look like? What challenges did the aid workers have to face? What role did their Zionism play? And finally, what expectations did the refugees actually had?

Based on research in numerous international archives, this study analyses the scope for action of Yugoslav Jewish actors in the 1930s. It provides new insights into refugee numbers, the system of aid networks, and it corrects outdated narratives. With its focus on the still neglected area of Southeast Europe, this study also makes an extraordinarily important and a new contribution to the history of the Holocaust.

In the 1970s, queer Jews became excited by the developments of the Gay Liberation Movement in both the US and Europe. Until then, they were not able to express their queerness in Jewish communities and hoped for new inclusive spaces. Yet, they quickly realized that the movement was not as welcoming as anticipated. Thus, they started to organize: in February 1972, the world’s first queer Jewish group became publicly visible in London with its symposium "The Jewish Homosexual in Society." The Jewish Gay Group began tackling the exclusion of non-heteronormative Jews in British Jewish and queer communities. Soon after, two more queer Jewish groups formed: Beit Haverim ("House of Friends") in Paris and Sjalhomo (a neologism of "shalom" and "homosexual") in Amsterdam. Besides their goal of emancipation, these groups brought together their members based on shared experiences as both Jewish and queer, opening up much needed spaces for social encounters. The groups also established a Europe-wide support network that enabled international collaboration for more than a decade. This study archives these groups’ histories and that of their network. By doing so, it broadens prevalent narratives of Europe’s post-World War II Jewry and queers the discipline of Jewish History.

Ours is an age shaped by identity debates. This publication focuses on works by Martin Buber, Aharon Gordon, and Ber Borochov, and asks how these authors construed Jewish-Zionist identity in the midst of global notions of nation, religion, and esotericism – each in their own way. This exploration of processes of identity building illustrates the struggles over tradition and reform, even in early Zionism.

Despite her dazzling impact, the reception of Rahel Levin Varnhagen and the "Berlin salons" has not yet been examined systematically. This interdisciplinary volume brings together various perspectives on the history of her reception from over two centuries, opening up new approaches to European Jewish cultural history through various identifications and processes of self-understanding.

Healing Holocaust Survivors examines the psychological rehabilitation strategies implemented by two major international humanitarian organizations—the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)—in Displaced Persons Camps across postwar Europe from 1944 to 1948. Focusing on the mental health needs of Holocaust survivors and other refugees, the book explores how psychosocial expertise became entangled with citizenship, politics, and visions of Europe's reconstruction after World War II.

Drawing from archival sources, institutional reports, and psychological literature of the period, this is the first in-depth account of how mental health professionals approached psychological rehabilitation, trauma, 　identity, and recovery in a humanitarian setting. It reveals how psychological strategies were often shaped by, and instrumentalized for, broader political and regulatory goals—including refugee resettlement, nation-building, and international diplomacy.

Bridging the fields of history, psychology, refugee studies, and humanitarian aid, this book sheds new light on the origins of modern refugee mental health practices and the complex role of international organizations in shaping the lives—and minds—of displaced populations.

Read the interview with Stella Maria Frei on De Gruyter Conversations and learn more about the author and her book!

“A powerful and timely study on the politics of psychological rehabilitation in the aftermath of war and mass displacement. This meticulously researched book sheds new light on how international organizations not only helped rebuild societies, but also intervened in the inner lives of survivors. It compellingly shows that psychological recovery in post-conflict settings is never apolitical, but shaped by humanitarian agendas, strategic interests, and competing visions of international order. Essential reading for global leaders, policymakers, and all who shape the future of refugee protection and recovery in a world defined by crisis.” - Bert Koenders, Professor for Peace, Justice and Security, Leiden University; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and UN Special Representative in Côte d'Ivoire and Mali.

The first comprehensive monograph on the literary works of philosopher Sarah Kofman (1934–94) interprets the techniques used by the author as contradicting French historical revisionism. Sarah Kofman’s turn to literature proves to be a survivors’ response to the denial of collaboration and the suppression of France’s co-responsibility for the deportation and murder of the European Jews.

The dissertation by Breslau rabbinical candidate Moritz Rahmer (1837–1904) on Jerome’s Quaestiones Herbraicae in Genesin is still being cited today. Rahmer’s objective was to draw the attention of the academic public to the influence of Jewish teachers on the Fathers of the Church. This annotated new edition discusses examples from Rahmer’s text and situates his dissertation within the context of Jewish scholarship.

The focus is on the "guided" transit of Russian Jews through the German Reich in the crisis year 1881/82. The logistical optimization of Jewish emigration was closely intertwined with the defense work against the anti-Semitic "Berlin Movement" that was forming at the same time. In addition to the presentation of central German-Jewish actors, lines of development up to the founding of the "Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden" in 1901 are outlined.

Today, law is no longer homogenous or unquestioned. Different overlapping legal systems constantly interfere with one another, both on an international level, in complex transnational contexts such as the European Union or human rights law, but also in the context of cultural diversity or conflicts between religious norms and civil institutions, between minorities and the power of the state. On the other hand, the neutrality of law is also under growing pressure, be it from different global transnational players, or from within nation states where calls are made to adapt law to the will of "the people." The heated European debate on the "refugee crisis" has made it manifest that law is more necessary than ever and yet fundamentally contested, perhaps even caught in contradictions and self-limitations. At the same time, the current perspective on legal problems allows us to address issues of diversity and the role of Europe in the globalized world more clearly. The articles of this book take these recent developments and debates as a starting point to discuss from the perspective of different disciplines the pressing question of how to live together in the new millennium and how to figure the long history of law before, besides, and after the dominant paradigm of state law.

The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.

When Sephardic Jews were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition, the comparatively tolerant Ottoman rulers allowed them to enter the empire of the sultans, where they would then live as dhimmis or people legally protected by the state. In the following decades, Jewish figures, including rabbis, members of the community, travelers, merchants, businesspeople, and medical professionals shaped the religious, economic, and social life from Syria to Egypt to the Ottoman Balkans. In this volume, interdisciplinary individual studies reaching across country borders explore the diversity of Jewish living environments in various intercultural communication spaces and in the context of acceptance and rejection, cultural transfer and economic relationships, as well as with regards to wars, conflicts, pogroms, and nation-building processes.

In recent years, the interest on life and work of the Jewish writer, philosopher, mystic and politician Shmuel Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975) has perceptibly increased. Well-known as a protagonist of the famous "Prague Circle", Bergmann headed for Palestine in 1920, became the driving force for building the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem and finally advanced as first Rector of the Hebrew University. All his life, close ties to the Czech Republic remained.
In the State of Israel, Bergmann became a leading philosopher and highly admired cultural figure. He himself showed great interest in world religions, mysticism, and Western esotericism. Bergmann also emerged as an important point of reference for left-wing Israeli discourse. Up from the late 1920ies has was one of the protagonists of the “Brit Shalom”, an initiative which called for an advocated peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs and a bi-national State in Israel/Palestine.
In this volume, distinguished historians, scholars of religion, and cultural scientists conflate a fascinating life story of a man who always worked on social and educational improvements and searched for fairness and deeper truths in a world full of conflict and antagonisms.

What are the future perspectives for Jews and Jewish networks in contemporary Europe? Is there a new quality of relations between Jews and non-Jews, despite or precisely because of the Holocaust trauma? How is the memory of the extermination of 6 million European Jews reflected in memorial events and literature, film, drama, and visual arts media? To what degree do European Jews feel as integrated people, as Europeans per see, and as safe citizens? An interdisciplinary team of historians, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and literary theorists answers these questions for Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany. They show that the Holocaust has become an enduring topic in public among Jews and non-Jews. However, Jews in Europe work self-confidently on their future on the "old continent," new alliances, and in cooperation with a broad network of civil forces. Non-Jewish interest in Jewish history and the present has significantly increased over decades, and networks combatting anti-Semitism have strengthened.

In the nineteenth and, in particular, twentieth centuries, literature became a place to negotiate ideas of Jewish femininity, an experimental space in which contemporary discourses were carried out and tried out on and using female Jewish characters. Literary portrayals of Jewish women and therefore Jewish femininity as a paradigm of male authorship are thus at the center of this study.

The contributions in this volume address developments in the emergence of a Jewish scholarship movement against the backdrop of diaspora and migration movements in Central and Eastern Europe. These studies on the epistemology of scholarly practices, on the genesis of methods and concepts, and exchange between theoretical approaches reveal the developments that took place in the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Jewish Scholarship) movement.

In this volume, international researchers examine transformative processes of Jewish youth movements in Europe and Palestine between 1918 and 1945. They focus on the thoroughly controversial responses of youth to questions of tradition and future; national, religious, and social community; new education; and equitable gender relations.

By analyzing Warsaw’s Yiddish daily press, this volume reveals how Polish Jews gained and disseminated subversive knowledge of National Socialist Germany in spite of censorship and repression, and also initiated campaigns of protest and solidarity to the benefit of the people being persecuted there.

This study sheds light on the lives of an exiled group of Eastern European Jewish socialists who spent time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, analyzes the different ways that they understood belonging, and traces their interactions with the international labor movement. It investigates in detail the exiles’ intermediary function between East and West, and between the non-Jewish and Jewish Socialist labor movements.

Enlightenment and emancipation set German-speaking Judaism the task of developing a modern Jewish identity. This development was accompanied by the reconceptualization of Jewish learning. This edited volume shines light on the multifaceted interrelations between pedagogical, religious, and societal developments during this period, between whose poles new concepts of Jewish education emerged.

Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921), one of the founders of modern Arabic and Islamic studies, was a Hungarian Jew and a Professor at the University of Budapest. A wunderkind who mastered Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic as a teenager, his works reached international acclaim long before he was appointed professor in his native country. From his initial vision of Jewish religious modernization via the science of religion, his academic interests gradually shifted to Arabic-Islamic themes. Yet his early Jewish program remained encoded in his new scholarly pursuits. Islamic studies was a refuge for him from his grievances with the Jewish establishment; from local academic and social irritations he found comfort in his international network of colleagues. This intellectual and academic transformation is explored in the book in three dimensions – scholarship on religion, in religion (Judaism and Islam), and as religion – utilizing his diaries, correspondences and his little-known early Hungarian works.

Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943) was a prominent German sociologist, economist and Zionist activist. As a co-founder of academic sociology in Germany, Oppenheimer vehemently opposed the influence of antisemitism on the nascent field. As an expert on communal agricultural settlement, Oppenheimer co-edited the scientific Zionist journal Altneuland (1904-1906), which became a platform for a distinct Jewish participation within the racial and colonial discourses of Imperial Germany. By positioning Zionist aspirations within a German colonial narrative, Altneuland presented Zionism as an extension, instead of a rejection, of German patriotism. By doing so, the journal’s contributors hoped to recruit new supporters and model Zionism as a source of secular Jewish identity for German Jewry. While imagining future relationships between Jews, Arabs, and German settlers in Palestine, Oppenheimer and his contemporaries also reimagined the place of Jews among European nations.

Wilhelm Herzberg’s novel Jewish Family Papers, which was first published under a pseudonym in 1868, was one of the bestselling German-Jewish books of the nineteenth century. Its numerous editions, reviews, and translations – into Dutch, English, and Hebrew – are ample proof of its impact. Herzberg’s Jewish Family Papers picks up on some of the most central contemporary philosophical, religious, and social debates and discusses aspects such as emancipation, antisemitism, Jewishness and Judaism, nationalism, and the Christian religion and culture, as well as gender roles. So far, however, the novel has not received the scholarly attention it so assuredly deserves. This bilingual volume is the first attempt to acknowledge how this outstanding source can contribute to our understanding of German-Jewish literature and culture in the nineteenth century and beyond. Through interdisciplinary readings, it will discuss this forgotten bestseller, embedding it within various contemporary discourses: religion, literature, emancipation, nationalism, culture, transnationalism, gender, theology, and philosophy.

When the papal seat moved from Rome to Avignon in 1309, this meant the end of the remarkable economic cooperation between the Papal curia and Jewish traders. Unlike France, where the monarchy was a catalyst for anti-Jewish prejudice, in Italy, Jews were part of narratives of communal belonging. The study provides a new perspective on the history of Jewish-Papal relations in the Middle Ages.

Jews and Armenians are often perceived as peoples with similar tragic historical experiences. Not only were both groups forced into statelessness and a life outside their homelands for centuries, in the 20th century, in the shadow of war, they were threatened with collective annihilation. Thus far, academic approaches to these two "classical" diasporas have been quite different. Moreover, Armenian and Jewish questions posed during the 19th and 20th centuries have usually been treated separately. The conference “We Will Live After Babylon” that took place in Hanover in February 2019, addressed this gap in research and was one of the first initiatives to deal directly with Jewish and Armenian historical experiences, between expulsion, exile and annihilation, in a comparative framework. The contributions in this volume take on multidisciplinary approaches relating to the conference’s central themes: diaspora, minority issues and genocide.

After the end of the Second World War, the Ullstein family fought to reclaim the publishing house that they were forced to sell in 1934. But the Americans needed the company’s printing plant in the Tempelhof district of Berlin for their reeducation program, and as a result delayed its restitution. At the same time, the Berlin senate feared reviving the Ullsteins’ legendary publishing house would spark a newspaper war in West Berlin.

Of about a million Jews that arrived to Israel from the (former) USSR after 1989 some 12% left the country by the end of 2017. It is estimated that about a half of them left "back" for the FSU, and the rest for the USA, Canada and the Western Europe. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of this specific Jewish Israeli Diaspora group through cutting-edge approaches in the social sciences, and examines the settlement patterns of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrants, their identity, social demographic profile, reasons of emigration, their economic achievements, identification, and status vis-à-vis host Jewish and non-Jewish environment, vision of Israel, migration interests and behavior, as well as their social and community networks, elites and institutions. Vladimir Ze’ev Khanin makes a significant contribution to migration theory, academic understanding of transnational Diasporas, and sheds a new light on the identity and structure of contemporary Israeli society. The book is based on the unique statistics from Israeli and other Government sources and sociological information obtained from the author’s first of this kind on-going study of Israeli Russian-speaking emigrant communities in different regions of the world.

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe arrived in New York City, where they did not only find a new home, but far away from their shtetl origin, the new members of the American society also began to politically radicalize. There has been a discussion in the literature related to the field, where, how, and why the Jewish population radicalized. This study analyses two waves of radicalization: one related to the American environment that is responsible for the described process at the end of the 19^th century; one, related to the developments in Eastern Europe during the early decades of the 20^th century. For both radicalization processes this book compares the reasons, elements, and aims of those who join radical movements to show that there is a transatlantic perspective that links both processes to each other.

In recent years more and more scholars have become aware of the fact that the 19th century movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums engaged in essential research of kabbalistic texts and thinkers. The legend of Wissenschaft’s neglect for the mystic traditions of Judaism is no longer sustainable. However, the true extent of this enterprise of German Jewish scholars is not yet known. This book will give an overview of what the leading figures have actually achieved: Landauer, Jellinek, Jost, Graetz, Steinschneider and others. It is true that their theological evaluation of the "worth" of kabbalah for what they believed was the ‘essence of Judaism’ yielded overall negative results, but this rejection was rationally founded and rather suggests a true concern for Judaism that transcended their own emancipation and assimilation as German Jews.

Based on the legacy and published works of the Göttingen orientalist Paul de Lagarde (1827–1891), the contributors to this volume undertake a historical inventory of his life and scientific work, including its political aspects, especially Lagarde’s anti-Semitism. Besides describing the history of German Ancient Near Eastern Studies, the book also furnishes a broader context against the backdrop of then-prevalent “völkisch” ideology.

The focus of this volume is on the reception and representation of Jewish resistance and the relationship between historiography and film fiction during the Holocaust. Three American feature films are examined from the perspectives of history and film science. The central question is: Can film fiction provide relevant historiographic understanding?

Über 230.000 polnische Juden überlebten den Zweiten Weltkrieg im Inneren der Sowjetunion. Viele waren der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung durch rechtzeitige Flucht auf sowjetisches Territorium entkommen. Andere wurden gegen ihren Willen von der sowjetischen Geheimpolizei in das Landesinnere der UdSSR verschleppt, wo sie in abgelegenen Siedlungen unter schwierigen Lebensbedingungen Zwangsarbeit verrichteten. Die Mehrheit der polnischen Juden hatte sich allerdings im Rahmen der Evakuierung sowjetischer Staatsbürger 1941–1942 aus den Frontgebieten in den Süden der UdSSR durchgeschlagen. Dort hielten sich die meisten polnisch-jüdischen Exilanten bis zur Rückkehr nach Polen im Jahre 1946 auf.
Die Studie untersucht Erfahrungen polnischer Juden im Zeitraum von 1939 bis 1946. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf den Jahren in den zentralasiatischen Sowjetrepubliken, wo hunderttausende polnische Juden täglich um ihr Überleben als Fremde in einem von Krieg, Armut und politischem Terror gezeichneten Land kämpfen mussten. Ihre Geschichte an der »Peripherie des Holocaust« (Yehuda Bauer) erweitert den Horizont jüdischer Erfahrungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg um die Erlebnisse im sowjetischen Exil.

Jewish life in Europe has undergone dramatic changes and transformations within the 20th century and also the last two decades. The phenomenon of the dual position of the Jewish minority in relation to the majority, not entirely unusual for Jewish Diaspora communities, manifested itself most distinctly on the European continent. This unique Jewish experience of the ambiguous position of insider and outsider may provide valuable views on contemporary European reality and identity crisis. The book focuses inter alia on the main common denominators of contemporary Jewish life in Central Europe, such as an intense confrontation with the heritage of the Holocaust and unrelenting antisemitism on the one hand and on the other hand, huge appreciation of traditional Jewish learning and culture by a considerable part of non-Jewish Europeans. The volume includes contributions on Jewish life in central European countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and Germany.

Given what we know about Nazi crimes of violence, it is hard for us to imagine encounters between Jews and non-Jews after 1945. Yet many connections developed between Holocaust survivors, refugees, hangers-on, observers, and profiteers. The volume examines relationships in civil society between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans from a historical and cultural historical perspective.

Researching and remembering the history of the Shoah has shifted to the digital media. This study analyzes the implications and consequences of this digital turn. Using the concept of “virtual spaces of remembrance,” it formulates an original theoretical approach. The work focuses on the Visual History Archive, the most important digital archive of testimonials by survivors of the Shoah.

The volume focuses on the work of 19^th and 20^th century Jewish interpreters and translators of the Bible. It examines their work in the context of the emergence of historical-critical biblical scholarship and evaluates their influence on aspects of Jewish education. The study raises questions about philosophical perspectives and specific areas of concern for Jewish scholars that went beyond those of predominantly Protestant biblical scholarship.

Jewish radical thoughts and actions can be described in a variety of terms and dimensions. Often, there is a connection implied between left-wing ideas and activists as well as their radicalism. This volume surveys Jewish radicalisms and present different approaches on this global historical phenomenon which are conceptualised as three different phenomena: Cultural, political and religious radicalism. The volume is focussed on the 20th century and tries to grasp the manifold Ideas of Jewish radicalism and, thereby, wants to open up the discussion on this category. This discussion is needed not only within Jewish Studies to engage with this topic and broaden our understanding of Jewish Radicalism as well as to form a useful applicable category. This volume is to be understood as a call for and a contribution to this debate.

"Authenticity" is a central concept of the modern era. The study in cultural history examines ideas about "authentic Jewish identity" and "authentic Judaism" in early German Zionist discourse. Contrary to the conventional view that situates authentic Judaism in the geo-cultural "East," it demonstrates the existence of a distinct Jewish authenticity in the German-speaking world.

The focus of the volume is on artistic and media involvement with anti-Semitism before 1950 across different arts and languages. It recalls largely forgotten novels from the 1920s, such as Hugo Bettauer’s City without Jews, and the film “Gentleman’s Agreement.” It reinterprets classical writers, such as Gotthold E. Lessing, and analyzes their work using the contemporary transdisciplinary approach in anti-Semitism research.

In recent years, there has been a tangible radicalization of antisemitism, which has had pernicious consequences, including deadly terrorist attacks. At the same time, the threshold for accepting antisemitic resentment has been lowered, to the extent that such resentment is camouflaged as "criticism of Israel." The volume is devoted to different aspects of current antisemitism, and discusses its mobilization potential.

As the civil rights of Jews underwent reform in Prussia, Prussian officers argued against compulsory military service for Jews. As they saw it, assimilation was a prerequisite for legal emancipation. The author examines the officers’ ideas on Judaism and emancipation based upon the writings of five influential officers who spoke of their encounters with Prussian and Polish Jews.

Starting out from Goethe’s ambivalent relationship to Jews and Judaism, this volume addresses the varied reception of Goethe’s person and works in the context of German-Jewish cultural history. For the first time, Goethe’s personal relationship to Jewish contemporaries and their relationship to him are correlated with the reception of his work by Jewish scholars and readers. The anti-Semitic appropriation of Goethe is additionally discussed.

The migration of German-speaking Jews to Sweden began as early as the 18^th c., and made a significant cultural impact. However, by admitting thousands of Jews from Hitler’s Germany, Sweden, which was officially neutral, faced a special dilemma during the Second World War. While the political establishment initially responded with reluctance or opposition, the engagement of civil society helped to facilitate the last-minute rescue of many people.

The impact of orientalism and anti-Semitism is not confined to Jewish scholars. The "culture war" also involved interdenominational conflicts among Christians. Oriental studies had a key role in these conflicts: indeed, Egyptology in Germany was compelled to avoid "biblical" themes to obtain private funding. Denominational differences directly influenced science policy in this discipline.

In the works of the Jewish author Albert Cohen, the notion of love in all its complexities enters in dialogue with the ethical discourse of Judaism. Against the backdrop of Judaism, this study presents an overall view of the ubiquitous manifestations of love in Cohen and reveals an ethical matrix that connects the rich experiential base of Judaism with the challenges of the present day.

Für die Zeit vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und der Schoa ist eine überproportional hohe Beteiligung von Menschen jüdischer Herkunft an der Arbeiterbewegung feststellbar. Das Streben nach Emanzipation prägte Judentum wie Arbeiterbewegung gleichermaßen. Zudem entwickelten sich im östlichen Europa spezielle jüdische Arbeiterorganisationen, die gegen doppelte Unterdrückung als Proletarier und als Juden kämpften. Der Band untersucht Debatten um gemeinsame Aktionsfelder, aber auch Faktoren wie Antisemitismus oder Konstruktionen stereotyper Feindbilder, mit denen Konzepte jüdischer Zugehörigkeit in Verbindung mit politischem Engagement diffamiert werden sollten. Die Beiträge des Sammelbandes widmen sich Debatten um gemeinsame Aktionsfelder von jeweils Teilen der Arbeiterbewegung und jüdischer Gruppen. Andererseits werden Faktoren wie Antisemitismus, Assimilationserwartungen oder Konstruktionen stereotyper Feindbilder einbezogen, die Konzepte jüdischer Zugehörigkeit in Verbindung mit politischem Engagement zu diffamieren suchten.

Neo-orthodox narrative literature lends insight into the complex processes of self-presentation by orthodox Judaism in the second half of the 19^th century, which included a restructuring of gender relations, along with strategies for maintaining order and demarcating boundaries. Feuilleton literature served as an entertainment medium as well as an aesthetic vehicle for transmitting religious and sociocultural knowledge.

This study on the history of German-Jewish education traces the impact of the Hazkarat Zebi School in Halberstadt, the only private Jewish elementary school in the former province of Saxony. The school followed the pioneering concepts of its founder, Hirsch Isaac Borchert, and its history reveals a unique commitment to reconciling religious tradition with attempts at modernization.

With courage born of desperation, Jewish fighters began their resistance in April 1943 in the Warsaw ghetto. This was the best known but only one of many Jewish resistance activities against the National Socialist policy of annihilation. This volume addresses the different forms and facets of Jewish resistance, such as the partisan war, underground movements, camp uprisings, assistance for escapes, and cultural resistance.

Culture amidst a wasteland – this book examines the creation and reception of artifacts and new forms of creativity in the concentration camps. The title of the interdisciplinary work, Poetics of Survival, suggests the embeddedness of these works in a moment of time but also their transcendence of time. Drawing on a comprehensive compilation of such works, the essays in this volume analyze their overarching literary and visual topoi.

The historian and religious scholar Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) was among the most influential minds in the post-Shoah German-speaking Jewish world. In 1943, with the help of Christian friends, he escaped from Berlin to Switzerland, where as a student, he became a spokesman in Jewish-Christian dialogue. Hartmut Bomhoff narrates how despite the experience of expulsion, life in the underground, and flight, Ehrlich became a bridge-builder.

German Judaism experienced an extraordinary phase of development and diversification between 1870 and 1933. Berlin became a hub for emigration and immigration, and important trends, such as Reform Judaism, were disseminated from there throughout the world. This volume assembles essays about this phenomenon by prominent authors, among them Atina Grossman, Michael A. Meyer, Shulamit Volkov, and Liliane Weissberg.

Originating in the collaboration of the international Research Network “Gender in Antisemitism, Orientalism and Occidentalism” (RENGOO), this collection of essays proposes to intervene in current debates about historical constructions of Jewish identity in relation to colonialism and Orientalism. The network‌’s collaborative research addresses imaginative and aesthetic rather than sociological questions with particular focus on the function of gender and sexuality in literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of Orientalist images. RENGOO’s first publication explores the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal Other intertwine. With its interrogation of the roles assumed in this interplay by gender, processes of sexualization, and aesthetic formations, the volume suggests new directions to the interdisciplinary study of gender, antisemitism, and Orientalism.

In his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Franz Werfel dealt with the subject of the Armenian genocide. How did he weave together fiction and historical reality in the novel? What are the different ways that the novel has been read from the points of view of Armenians, Jews, Turks, and Germans? This volume addresses the issue of how the representation of the genocide in Armenia is viewed in today's context of European integration.

In recent years the role of religion in the avant-garde has begun to attract scholarly interest. The present volume focuses on the work of the Romanian Jewish poet and visual artist Isidore Isou (1925–2007) who founded the lettrist movement in the 1940s. The Jewish tradition played a critical part in the Western avant-garde as represented by lettrism. The links between lettrism and Judaism are substantial, yet they have been largely unexplored until now. The study investigates the works of a movement that explicitly emphasises its vanguard position while relying on a medieval religious tradition as a source of radical textual techniques. It accounts for lettrism’s renunciation of mainstream traditions in favour of a subversive tradition, in this case Jewish mysticism. The religious inclination of lettrism also affects the notion of the avant-garde. The elements of the Jewish tradition in Isou’s theories and artistic production evoke a broader framework where religion and experimental art supplement each other.

150 years before Sartre and the “Dialectics of the Enlightenment,” academically sophisticated journals had already begun their attempts to record and explain modern anti-Semitism. For the first time, this volume reconstructs many of these explanatory approaches and uncovers important previously forgotten texts. They reveal a diverse literature that constitutes a pre-history of contemporary research on anti-Semitism.

As an intellectual, industrialist, and minister as well as the author of numerous papers and letters, Walther Rathenau was an important figure of his times in business, politics, sociology, and art. The “classical” phase of the modern age in which he lived continues to have reverberations today. This volume examines Rathenau’s positions as well as the modes of remembrance and attribution that have accompanied him ever since his violent death.

Sephardic and Ashkenazic Judaism have long been studied separately. Yet, scholars are becoming ever more aware of the need to merge them into a single field of Jewish Studies. This volume opens new perspectives and bridges traditional gaps. The authors are not simply contributing to their respective fields of Sephardic or Ashkenazic Studies. Rather, they all include both Sephardic and Ashkenazic perspectives as they reflect on different aspects of encounters and reconsider traditional narratives. Subjects range from medieval and early modern Sephardic and Ashkenazic constructions of identities, influences, and entanglements in the fields of religious art, halakhah, kabbalah, messianism, and charity to modern Ashkenazic Sephardism and Sephardic admiration for Ashkenazic culture. For reasons of coherency, the contributions all focus on European contexts between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

In May 1924, the Soncino Society of the Friends of the Jewish Book was founded in Berlin. Named after the Soncinos, a 15th to 16th century Jewish-Italian family of printers, it was the first society of Jewish bibliophiles, and set the goal of publishing rare Jewish books and Hebrew printings. The eight essays in this volume explore the history of the Society and its commitment to Hebrew book culture.

An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century – from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the ‘new Jews of Germany,’ 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.

Two-hundred years after the issuance of the “Edict concerning the civil rights of Jews in the Prussian state,” the thirteen essays in this volume examine the Prussian emancipation model with the benefit of previously unresearched sources. Starting from the situation facing Prussian Jews at the time of King Friedrich II, the contributors explore the question of what new options the Edict opened up for the Jews and which constraints they continued to face as before.

The Habsburg Empire was one of the first regions where the academic study of Judaism took institutional shape in the nineteenth century. In Hungary, scholars such as Leopold and Immanuel Löw, David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, Wilhelm Bacher, and Samuel Krauss had a lasting impact on the Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Science of Judaism”). Their contributions to Biblical, rabbinic and Semitic studies, Jewish history, ethnography and other fields were always part of a trans-national Jewish scholarly network and the academic universe. Yet Hungarian Jewish scholarship assumed a regional tinge, as it emerged at an intersection between unquelled Ashkenazi yeshiva traditions, Jewish modernization movements, and Magyar politics that boosted academic Orientalism in the context of patriotic historiography. For the first time, this volume presents an overview of a century of Hungarian Jewish scholarly achievements, examining their historical context and assessing their ongoing relevance.

The year 2013 marks the centennial of the first “Free-German Youth Day” that took place on the Meissner massif. Anti-Semitic outbursts erupted at the margins of this historical gathering. In its wake, a right-wing populist faction of the youth movement arose for the first time. This collected volume examines the interface between the youth movement, nationalism, and anti-Semitism.

Besides targeting Jewish jurists, from 1933 onward anti-Semitic movement in Germany particulary persecuted Jewish doctors. As a consequence of the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service,” Jewish doctors were fired from public establishments and expelled from universities. This volume examines the history of the disenfranchisement, expulsion, and murder of Jewish physicians by the National Socialists.

The road to full legal equality was a long one for the Jews of Prussia. The focus of this study is on the history of conflict and dialogue between representatives of the Jewish community and Prussian administrative authorities. By examining the history of this discourse, the study casts light on the limitations and possibilities of tolerance in what ultimately proved to be a successful historical negotiation, culminating in the Prussian “Emancipation Edict” of 1812.

The dandy is a Janus-headed figure: one half still imprisoned in the habitus and mentality of the 18th century, and the other half a maverick breaking through the class barriers imposed by the nobility. The new porousness of the world of the nobility cut off the dandy as a social type from his origins. This volume examines various manifestations and transformations of the dandy in the 19th and 20th centuries and presents biographies of some well-known dandies.

As part of the German Jewish Cultural Heritage project, the expert contributors to this volume examine the cultural influence of the German-speaking Jewish intelligentsia around the world. This influence continues to be felt in many countries of origin and exile without being adequately reflected in collective consciousness. This volume makes a substantive contribution to the search for traces of German-speaking Jewish culture in the wake of emigration.

On 21 March 1933, the National Socialists celebrated their alliance with the old Wilhelmine elites on the “Day of Potsdam.” Eighty years following 1933, the great year of upheaval, this volume more closely reexamines the historical context of the “Day of Potsdam” as a critical moment on the road to dictatorship. Nine scholarly articles reconstruct the events on the “Day of Potsdam” and analyze its importance in the culture of commemoration.

This study considers the question of how specific ideas about Jews are constructed and activated. At which point can a statement be regarded as anti-Semitic? The two authors examine the various verbal manifestations of current anti-Semitism and the mental images on which these are based, applying both a historical perspective and the perspective of linguistic and cognitive science.

In the spring of 2010, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit featured a headline story titled "Typically Jewish" - and puncutated this headline with a question mark. While this headline speaks to the problems associated with identity as an analytical category, the reciprocal relationships between Jewish self-characterizations and outside attributions of Jewishness remain of key importance for understanding the history of German-Jewish relations. At the heart of this volume are fictional models of "Jewishness," distinctions between different Jewish groups, as well as an examination of how internal Jewish discourse responded to anti-Semitic attributions - for example, during the time of the Weimar Republic.

This volume unites portraits of Jewish women in Brandenburg-Prussia in their path to self-emancipation in religion, culture, and society. It focuses on discussing representative figures from the realms of art, literature, politics, and society. All of the portrayed individuals were united in their struggle for the right of self-determination and social equality as women and Jews. The articles contained in this volume extend from the Enlightenment to the middle of the 20th century. They address various specific topics, including the influence of parlor culture on Berlin society, the growing role of the female voice in politics and society, and the paths blazed by these unique women in traditionally male domains.

The memory of the Shoah remains a contentious issue in Poland to this day. Since the mid-1980s, public discourse has repeatedly focussed on the issue of how to deal with the National Socialists' destruction of the Jews. This has raised accusations that the Polish people bore an element of moral or active guilt during World War Two which, however, conflict with the country's long-established perception of itself as a community of heroes and victims. The author examines the question of how Polish society is handling this contradiction and what effect the discussions have on the opinions formed by the population.

How did the diasporic existence affect Heinrich Heine – in terms of both his work and his self-image as a writer? In a paradigmatic manner his work reflects the shift from a religious to a secular understanding of the Jewish diaspora which is typical of the 19th century. The introduction of this new perspective into German literature can also be viewed as a result of the Jewish self-awareness of political authors in Heine’s time.

The notion of “self” and “other” and its representation in artwork and literature is an important theme in current cultural sciences as well as in our everyday life in contemporary Western societies. Moreover, the concept of “self” and “other” and its imaginary dichotomy is gaining more and more political impact in a world of resurfacing ideology-ridden conflicts. The essays deal with Jewish reality in contemporary Germany and its reflection in movies from the special point of view of cultural sciences, political sciences, and religious studies. This anthology presents challengingly new insights into topics rarely covered, such as youth culture or humor, and finally discusses the images of Jewish life as realities still to be constructed.

This volume, which draws on new sources, presents the Jewish salons of Berlin around 1800 as a lively and at the same time fragile network of communication. The salon society of 1794/95, the book’s year of focus, reveals a culture of sociality in which highly diverse venues could become ‘salons’ and it puts the salons’ guests and hostesses (back) in the limelight. Selected profiles of the correspondence, which sometimes lasted for decades and has now been reconstructed, allow an examination of turning points in the perception of Jewish hostesses and of possible interactions between salons and the contemporary discourse on emancipatory issues.