Der Workshop wurde aufgrund der Corona-Pandemie auf 2021 verschoben. Der neue Termin wird vermutlich im Herbst 2020 feststehen. Informationen und Rückfragen per Mail an: nachwuchstagungjudaistik[at]gmail.com

The dichotomy of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ characterizes our image of Jewish history and culture to this day. The dualism of “land equals stagnation” and “city equals modernization” is a common scholarly pattern that needs to be questioned. The relationship between city and countryside has mostly been seen as a one-way street and as an “either/or”, either city or country. This raises the question: is this dichotomy tenable in light of newer research on transformation processes? One such example is German Jewry, as analyzed by David Sorkin (The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, 1987) as well as other scholars. Such a stark contrast obscures important questions: What happened in-between city and countryside and in movements that headed in both directions? How are categories like “city” and “countryside” complicated by connections and transfers of persons, texts,objects, ideas,and institutions?
This interdisciplinary workshop therefore focuses on the phenomenon of rural Jewries in their relationships to urban ones, and is not limited to any given historical period. The focus is on Central Europe (esp. the German-speaking areas), as well as Eastern (Central) Europe. These regions are entangled not least by Jewish migrations in the context of tradition and modernization; they also suggest different responses to the core questions of the workshop.
The following questions shall be discussed at the workshop: Are rural and urban Jewries today still considered as set categories in research? When and where have rural Jews been agents of modernization, and when and where did such impulses come from and urban Jews? The interaction of the different milieus of the rural population with each other as well as that of the country with the city and vice versa should be included.