Heft 2 des 63. Jahrgangs der ZRGG (2011) widmet sich verschiedenen Aspekten jüdischer Identitäten im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.

HOLGER HÜBNER geht dem „Feldgottesdienst zu Jom Kippur vor Metz 1870“ nach und unterscheidet, was an dieser Erzählung Mythos und was Realität ist, FRANZISKA KRAH beleuchtet die Auseinandersetzung von Binjamin W. Segels mit dem Antisemitismus im Allgemeinen und den „Prokollen der Weisen von Zion“ im Besonderen, KAY SCHWEIGMANN-GREVE zeichnet die Entwicklung des SKIF seit 1945 nach, der Kinderorganisation des jüdisch-sozialdemokratischen „Bund“.

In den 1920er Jahren korrespondierte Franz Rosenzweig mit Siegfried Kracauer über die Figur des Propheten. STEPHANIE BAUMANN hat seine Briefe im Kracauer-Nachlass entdeckt und für die ZRGG eingeleitet und ediert.

MARIO KESSLER stellt die Neuausgabe von Simom Dubnows „Buch des Lebens“ vor.

Ein umfangreicher Besprechungs-Teil rundet das aktuelle Heft ab.

ABSTRACTS:

HOLGER HÜBNER: Der Feldgottesdienst zu Jom Kippur vor Metz 1870.
Commemoration of a field service held by 1200 Jewish soldiers protected by their gentile comrades on Yom Kippur of 1870 during the siege of Metz in the Franco-Prussian war played an important role among German Jews as a symbol of acceptance and integration into the society as citizens with equal rights. Based on a short note in several newspapers it became very fast a very common commemoration among Jews. But it was a pious fraud of an act that never happened in the described way. Although this was known and already published in late 1870 it did not hamper the spreading. In recent years this tradition of commemoration was revitalized. This time even in combination with a wrong date: the day when the French garrison of Metz surrendered. Moreover, it is described even by officials as an act of traditional religious tolerance in the German armed forces.

FRANZISKA KRAH: Mit den Waffen der Aufklärung gegen den Antisemitismus: Leben und Wirken Binjamin W. Segels.
The rise of political anti-Semitism in Imperial and Weimar Germany met with public opposition initiated primarily by Jews. From various perspectives, jewish journalists and intellectuals investigated the origin of this anti-Semitism, its different manifestations as well as possibilities of its public rejection. Journalist Binjamin W. Segel (1866-1931) hereby focused his efforts on debunking anti-Semitic myths, such as the Jewish World Conspiracy, as popularized by the text “The protocols of the Elders of Zion”. In his writings, Segel, with an Eastern European background, pays attention to the discrimination of “Ostjuden” (East-European Jews) in particular. Furthermore, Segel deals with questions regarding the origins of anti-Semitism, and the effectiveness of Jewish opposition towards it. The following article outlines his life and discusses his work.

KAY SCHWEIGMANN-GREVE: Sotzialistisher Kinder Farband (SKIF): Die Kinderorganisation des Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbundes seit 1945.
Following the liberation of Poland 1945, the childrens organization of the Jewish-Socialdemocratic “Bund” SKIF formed itself anew and remained in existence until the communists’ ban of social democratic organizations. Starting with the first post-war conference of the International of social democratic children and youth education in October 1945 until the mid-sixties the SKIF played a recognizable role within these international structures of the “Falcons” movement. In the late forties the SKIF simultaneously existed in Paris, where a successor organization is still active, and in Brussels. During the seventies and eighties a “SKIF-ist” holiday colony existed in New York and from 1950 until this day further groups exist in Melbourne. Since 1945 the SKIF has existed primarily as an organization of survivors and their children. Later it managed to develop a new function and to offer an educational model for the following generations of Jewish children, which lies beyond religion and Zionism.