KLAUS BRINGMANN
Elias Bickermann und der 'Gott der Makkabäer'. Ein Historiker zwischen Theodizee und Geschichtswissenschaft

The article examines Elias J. Bickermann's famous book "Der Gott der Makkabäer" published in 1937. The author, one of the most distinguished Jewish scholars in the field of ancient history, maintained that the persecution of Jewish religion ordered by king Antiochus IV of Syria was due to Jewish reformers inspired by the Greek concept of natural religion. It is argued here that this thesis is not consistent with the sources, but was stimulated by a supposed analogy, the so-called Jewish reform movement of nineteenth century, and is based on Bickermann's disputable method of analyzing the main source, Machabees II.

RACHEL HEUBERGER
Die Arche Noah der Erinnerung – Jüdische Studien und die Rolle der Bibliographien.

The vital role played by Judaica collections in the renewal of Jewish Studies in Germany after Nationalsocialism is little known as is the work of the outstanding Hebrew bibliographers, who laid the foundation for the development of the Wissenschaft des Judentums in the 19th and 20th century. Moritz Steinschneider, who died 100 years ago, published the first periodical of Jewish Studies, compiled the Catalogue of the Hebrew Books of the Bodleian Library in Oxford and was a pioneer in the study of cultural transfer. His successor Aron Freimann, head of the Frankfurt Judaica Collection, successfully organized the network of Jewish studies and created essential bibliographical tools. Using modern technology and digitizing thousands of Jewish books, the Frankfurt Judaica collection today helps to preserve Jewish cultural heritage and codetermines the future collective memory.

ARNDT ENGELHARDT
Divergierende Perspektiven. Zur Rezeption der deutsch-jüdischen Enzyklopädien in der Weimarer Republik

The article explores the perception and reception of the Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) at the beginning of the 20th century using the Jewish encyclopedias of that period. The modern Jewish encyclopedias from the mid-19th to the early 20th century are viewed in close connection with the development of general and theological encyclopedias. The cooperation of Jewish scholars working on the second edition of the Protestant work Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG2) and on general encyclopedias since the mid-19th century, such as the Brockhaus encyclopedia, is seen as an indication that the Wissenschaft des Judentums was drawing closer to general developments in science. This took place parallel with the development of various subfields within the Jewish Studies and their delayed acceptance by non-Jewish scholars. Relying on reviews of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which was published from 1928 on in the Eschkol Publishing House in Berlin, an attempt is made to show the divergent perspectives on the Jewish disciplines that emerged in the Weimar period through the medium of the encyclopedia, and which were driven by religious and scholarly motives. The article seeks in this way to recontextualize the historical role and perception of Jewish Studies against the backdrop of an increasing professionalization and the general tendencies toward popularizing science at the beginning of the 20th century.

KLAUS HÖDL
Der Platz der allgemeinen Geschichte in Jüdischen Studien

In the late 20th century, Germany experienced a stunning expansion of the field of Jewish Studies. They were established either as independent research institutes or in affiliation with universities all over the country. This phenomenon came along with a craze of Germans for things Jewish, i. e. Klezmer Music, Jewish museums, etc., and lasted until the early years of the 21st century. The article deals with the question of how Jewish Studies can find further legitimacy in a country in which the interest of the population at large in things Jewish has been dwindling. The thesis introduced in the text claims that Jewish history and culture must be presented as an inextricable part of general history. Jews are not to be described under the perspective of their contribution to them but of their participation in and shaping of culture and society at large.

ANDREAS LEHNARDT
Judaistik und Theologie – Versuch einer Standortbestimmung

The articles gives a short survey on the history and the ongoing debate on Jewish Studies within theological, mainly protestant faculties in German universities. Beginning in the early sixties of the past century Jewish Studies were represented under difficult circumstances within theological studies. Up to the eighties Jewish Studies were connected with the Christian belief in the mission to the Jews. Only after a long process of reconciliation with the Jewish communities and the installation of a renewed theology of dialogue in the past decades a drastic change in attitude to Jewish Studies has become discernable. Some protestant theological faculties, like the one in Göttingen and Tübingen, started new interdisciplinary programs in Jewish Studies, thereby leaving all past conceptions of Jewish studies behind. In other places, e.g. Mainz, Jewish Studies are still related to the so called science of Mission or to the more general field science of religion.

MERON MENDEL
Aufgewachsen zwischen zwei Welten – Zur Identität der zweiten Generation jüdischer
Jugendlicher im Nachkriegsdeutschland. Micha Brumlik zum 60. Geburtstag

The paper deals with the questions of identity faced by the second generation of Jews in Germany after World War II. The author analyzes the collective identity of this generation using Karl Mannheim’s “Generations’ Theory”. This analysis is based on two historical sources: pedagogical research held by Walter Oppenheimer in the Jewish communities in Germany during the 1950's and the 1960's and autobiographies written by members of the second generation. In their autobiographies the members of the second generation reflect the central problems and conflicts which Oppenheimer discovered in his study: the difficulty to come to terms with the reality of life in ‘the land of perpetrators’ and as result the search after a valid model for national identity. These conflicts were articulated most explicitly in the relationship with the parents. Soon after becoming adults most of the authors immigrated to Israel with the hope of finding an answer for their Identity conflicts. Yet, just few of them could put down roots in the new land.

KAY SCHWEIGMANN-GREVE
Jüdische Nationalität aus verweigerter Assimilation. Biographische Parallelitäten bei Moses
Hess und Chaim Zhitlowsky und ihre ideologische Verarbeitung

Moses Hess and Chaim Zhitlowsky are both intellectuals of the first generation of emancipated Jews that are part of a modernizing society at the beginning of industrialization. Both come from traditional families, received a religious education which was followed by a secular one and refer in the same manner to the surrounding gentile culture as to Judaism. In spite of more than 50 years difference between their births (Hess 1812 in Bonn, Rhineland, Zhitlowsky 1865 next to Vitebsk, Byelorussia) they share biographical parallels. Due to the different stage of development between Germany and Russia they share attempted assimilation and anti-semitic exclusion. In their theories of secular Jewish identity they process their experiences in a comparable way. Nevertheless their theoretical concepts are different because of the changed contemporary context. Hess creates an essential “Jewish Race” and Zhitlowsky focuses mainly on a language and Jewish culture based nationality.

DORON KIESEL
Schwarze Schafe. Selbst- und Fremdbilder im israelischen Identitätsdiskurs

The waves of immigration to Israel had a formative influence on the patterns of identity in the Israeli society. The Jewish infrastructure in the British mandate in Palestine was mainly built up by European Jews. After the foundation of the State of Israel, Jews from Northern Africa and several Arabic countries immigrated to Israel and had to cope with modern social, political and cultural structures they did not know up to that point. The secular and modernized Jewish population in Israel on their part had no experience in integrating Jews which used to live a traditional and religious way of life in non-industrialized Islamic countries. The clash of different Jewish ways of life and thinking led to tensions and conflicts and finally to a development of various identity concepts within the Jewish population in Israel. A similar process could be noticed, when since the 1990ies Jews from the former Soviet Union came to Israel. Amongst them there were Jews coming from industrialized urban regions and those who came from rural, scarcely industrialized Asian parts of the former SU. Conflicts based on different patterns of identity flared up again in the multicultural country.

Außerhalb des Schwerpunkts:

ALEXANDER DUBRAU
Die Rabbinen und das Vergessen – Zur Deutung eines Paradigmas in der Aggada

The article discusses various aspects of the oblivion of traditions in rabbinic literature. It focuses on a tradition complex dealing with the loss of oral traditions in many sources. Hence, the aggadic traditions about oblivion in tannaitic, amoraic, and gaonic sources show a connected leitmotiv. Aggadic sources regarding the oblivion of traditions are crucial for the process of development of the oral Torah: Moses forgets the tradition revealed at Sinai, Joshua – his successor – forgets the oral tradition grieving over Moses’ death, hundreds of Mishna orders are lost in the period of Hillel and Shammai in the first Century C. E., and finally even Rabbi Jehuda haNasi forgets collections of Halachot. Yet, the consequences of the process of oblivion are interpreted differently by the Rabbis. The different omissions mark a break in continuity of traditions, and therefore justify new forms of transmitting the oral Torah. This article analyzes the development of this paradigm.

CHRISTIANE TWIEHAUS
Die Synagoge im Spiegel der öffentlichen Medien des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Synagogenbauten in
Karlsruhe von Josef Durm und Gustav Ziegler

In the past, research about German synagogue architecture of the 19th century has provided primarily an academic analysis of style, form and history, starting from a modern point of view. In contrast, little or no consideration has been devoted so far to contemporary understanding of a synagogue’s style and function in Jewish and non-Jewish public media. Was it perceived merely as a piece of new architecture or did other aspects become important in the public eye as well? Newspapers, journals, annals and other media are providing an answer to these questions. The analysis of newspaper articles about two synagogues in Karlsruhe, which were built in the 19th century for the capital of the Großherzogtum Baden, demonstrates that politics, religious conflicts and social aspects can have a much bigger impact on public perception than the discussion of architectural style alone. Theses articles reflect their time and are detached from a strict architectural discussion of the synagogue building, as was the case of many other contemporary monuments.
The present essay is part of a dissertation, dealing with synagogue buildings in 19th and early 20th century Baden and their perception in the public eye.

JIHAN RADJAI
„Vergesse ich dich, Jerusalem...“ Die jüdisch-persischen Bildteppiche Kashans als
zionistisches Kulturgut

The Jewish Museum of Switzerland in Basel has in its collection a hand-made silk carpet showing a typical Persian pattern which reflects the style of the city of Kashan. However, this carpet presents Hebrew inscriptions as well as symbols and motifs of Zionist art. The Dome of the Rock, the Star of David, the depiction of the Western Wall as well as the early Zionist banner with blue and white stripes clearly point to modern Jewish history and not only to Biblical times. As a pictorial Judeo-Persian carpet it stands for a group of a dozen carpets of the kind which were crafted in Kashan. Every carpet of this group offers a colophon with a description and a date. Until today, the colophon has been considered as a reliable reference to the place of origin and the date of these carpets. Thus, they were dated to the 19th century according to this colophon. But their Zionist iconography leaves little doubt that they were in fact crafted in the 20th century. The pictorial analysis proves that a Zionist pattern of design from Eretz Israel served as a model for the carpet production in Iran. In a second step, the essay explores the cultural significance of these unique group of carpets and focuses on their iconography that was developed by the Bezalel Art and Crafts School in Jerusalem as a ‘sign language’ of cultural Zionism. Apparently, these carpets which adapted the typical motifs of Bezalel were intended for Persian-Jewish customers and presented them with a new form of participation in Zionism by combining a traditional carpet pattern with modern Jewish iconography.

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