Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-013
Kyle Jantzen
of we they that persecution by such totalitarian Germany a problem. The American is still under the illusion that from are entirely though thousands [of Christian refugees] have forced to leave Germany and are without any means of livelihood. If we are to have a united front let it be not only against anti-Semitism but against persecution of both Jews and Christians.³ ⁰ Hundreds of thousands of our fellow-Christians are fleeing before Nazi brutality. It is im-possible to exaggerate their suffering. They are victims of the ruthless philosophy of “ race, blood and soil ” ; a philosophy which finds the religion of Jesus a stumbling block which must somehow, if possible, be eliminated. And let us make no mistake about it. The assault of the Nazi on Christianity is a carefully planned program of extermination; it has not stopped short of the fearful barbarism of the concentration camp and all the ter-rors of exile.³³
{"title":"Nazi Racism, American Anti-Semitism, and Christian Duty","authors":"Kyle Jantzen","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-013","url":null,"abstract":"of we they that persecution by such totalitarian Germany a problem. The American is still under the illusion that from are entirely though thousands [of Christian refugees] have forced to leave Germany and are without any means of livelihood. If we are to have a united front let it be not only against anti-Semitism but against persecution of both Jews and Christians.³ ⁰ Hundreds of thousands of our fellow-Christians are fleeing before Nazi brutality. It is im-possible to exaggerate their suffering. They are victims of the ruthless philosophy of “ race, blood and soil ” ; a philosophy which finds the religion of Jesus a stumbling block which must somehow, if possible, be eliminated. And let us make no mistake about it. The assault of the Nazi on Christianity is a carefully planned program of extermination; it has not stopped short of the fearful barbarism of the concentration camp and all the ter-rors of exile.³³","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115462280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-017
{"title":"Index","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116837408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-006
L. Fischer
No personal documents have survived in which Johann Sebastian Bach (1685– 1750) has anything explicit to say about Judaism or Jews, nor do we have any reason to assume that Bach ever had any personal contact with Jews. There are some who would be only too pleased to let the matter rest right there. Yet what we can say quite a lot about is how Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations and, by extension, Jews were represented in Bach’s musical output. It is frequently argued, sometimes with surprising vehemence, that any such issues were surely the responsibility of the librettists and not the composer. Yet it should be instantly obvious that this line of argument hardly holds. In this particular case, it is clear that Bach not only chose the librettos he set but in fact “preferred to work directly with an author rather than use already published collections” of libretti for his cantatas.1 Moreover, while his peers frequently composed entire annual cycles of cantatas based on the texts of just one librettist, Bach never did so and rarely drew on texts by one and the same librettist for more than three consecutive cantatas.2 But whatever his level of input into the librettos he chose, he certainly had considerable leeway when it came to the deployment of musical means to de/emphasize certain elements in relation to others; he could go out of his way to highlight or elaborate upon certain ideas and concepts, say, or present them in a relatively dispassionate manner; whether a particular textual element was presented in a chaste or triumphalist manner, for instance, depended in high measure on the musical setting. Given his education and training, Bach was steeped in the Lutheran orthodoxy of his day and his knowledge of, and commitment to, that orthodoxy was carefully examined before he was appointed to his position as cantor in Leipzig. In that role, he was beholden to provide a constant flow of church music for the city’s main churches, especially St Thomas and St Nikolai. The express purpose of this church music was the utilization of musical means to render the congregants more receptive to the Lutheran orthodoxy of the day and thus intensify its articulation in ways that the spoken word alone, it was assumed, could not. In implementing this agenda, Bach presumably thought of himself not so much as
{"title":"The Legacy of Anti-Judaism in Bach’s Sacred Cantatas","authors":"L. Fischer","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-006","url":null,"abstract":"No personal documents have survived in which Johann Sebastian Bach (1685– 1750) has anything explicit to say about Judaism or Jews, nor do we have any reason to assume that Bach ever had any personal contact with Jews. There are some who would be only too pleased to let the matter rest right there. Yet what we can say quite a lot about is how Judaism, Jewish-Christian relations and, by extension, Jews were represented in Bach’s musical output. It is frequently argued, sometimes with surprising vehemence, that any such issues were surely the responsibility of the librettists and not the composer. Yet it should be instantly obvious that this line of argument hardly holds. In this particular case, it is clear that Bach not only chose the librettos he set but in fact “preferred to work directly with an author rather than use already published collections” of libretti for his cantatas.1 Moreover, while his peers frequently composed entire annual cycles of cantatas based on the texts of just one librettist, Bach never did so and rarely drew on texts by one and the same librettist for more than three consecutive cantatas.2 But whatever his level of input into the librettos he chose, he certainly had considerable leeway when it came to the deployment of musical means to de/emphasize certain elements in relation to others; he could go out of his way to highlight or elaborate upon certain ideas and concepts, say, or present them in a relatively dispassionate manner; whether a particular textual element was presented in a chaste or triumphalist manner, for instance, depended in high measure on the musical setting. Given his education and training, Bach was steeped in the Lutheran orthodoxy of his day and his knowledge of, and commitment to, that orthodoxy was carefully examined before he was appointed to his position as cantor in Leipzig. In that role, he was beholden to provide a constant flow of church music for the city’s main churches, especially St Thomas and St Nikolai. The express purpose of this church music was the utilization of musical means to render the congregants more receptive to the Lutheran orthodoxy of the day and thus intensify its articulation in ways that the spoken word alone, it was assumed, could not. In implementing this agenda, Bach presumably thought of himself not so much as","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"C-32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126488268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-003
D. Bell
It seems somewhat unnecessary by now to state candidly that the Reformation, at least as traditionally understood, never occurred. While something most assuredly happened in Germany in the sixteenth century, it is impossible to conceive of what that something was absent a discussion of what came before and what came after. In other words, any inquiry into the ‘Reformation’ calls for coverage of a daunting range of topics, personalities, and localities. We do know that anniversaries, such as the one commemorating the 500 anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, are historical constructs. As Robert Scribner, the renowned historian of the German Reformation, has reminded us in a slender but provocative book on another anniversary – the occasion of the 500 anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther – for most of us, the Reformation began when Luther brazenly, if rather commonly, posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517. But, Scribner cautions,
{"title":"The Impact of the Reformation on Early Modern German Jewry","authors":"D. Bell","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-003","url":null,"abstract":"It seems somewhat unnecessary by now to state candidly that the Reformation, at least as traditionally understood, never occurred. While something most assuredly happened in Germany in the sixteenth century, it is impossible to conceive of what that something was absent a discussion of what came before and what came after. In other words, any inquiry into the ‘Reformation’ calls for coverage of a daunting range of topics, personalities, and localities. We do know that anniversaries, such as the one commemorating the 500 anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, are historical constructs. As Robert Scribner, the renowned historian of the German Reformation, has reminded us in a slender but provocative book on another anniversary – the occasion of the 500 anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther – for most of us, the Reformation began when Luther brazenly, if rather commonly, posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517. But, Scribner cautions,","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123833779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-014
Ursula Rudnick
arguments. Driven by fear that faith in Christ might be lost, he would be led to the infamous statements, which Protestant enemies of the Jews later invoked time and again.¹¹
{"title":"Lutheran Churches and Luther’s Anti-Semitism","authors":"Ursula Rudnick","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-014","url":null,"abstract":"arguments. Driven by fear that faith in Christ might be lost, he would be led to the infamous statements, which Protestant enemies of the Jews later invoked time and again.¹¹","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125908419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-012
Dirk Schuster
Recent years have witnessed an expansion in the use of spatial conceptions for historical analysis.1 In the fields of Study of Religion and Theology specifically, researchers such as Kim Knott have introduced ‘space’ as an analytical category.2 This term is distinctly polysemic, encompassing, in the religious arena, physical space such as a church, mosque, or synagogue; geographic space such as a region or country; but also social space, perhaps a Baptist women’s choir or a Protestant congregation. In a broad sense, the first two areas, that is, physical and geographical, might be perceived as constructed space, and the third by its content. Our Baptist women’s choir, for instance, is a space in which women of Baptist belief meet in order to sing together. Thus, we already note a certain exclusivity by which entry into this space is governed: one must be a woman, wish to sing, and adhere to the Baptist faith in order to belong. Our Baptist women’s choir, however, is still not an ‘exclusive space,’ as its boundaries are permeable. It would be possible for this choir to accept men into its ranks, perhaps because there was no men’s choir available for those who would like to sing in a group. It would also be possible that the choir numbers among its members someone who does not sing, but performs administrative duties for the group. Furthermore, it would be possible to include non-Baptist members if appropriate, say, for inter-religious projects. In what follows, the term ‘exclusive space’ will extend the spatial conception regarding religion to the feature of ‘race’ (race referring to a racist categorization of humans). For this purpose, ‘exclusive space’ is to be understood in the sense that only a specific group of individuals ever has access to it. ‘Outsiders’ can never enter this ‘exclusive space.’ In this context, then, space becomes a social
{"title":"Exclusive Space as a Criterion for Salvation in German Protestantism during the Third Reich","authors":"Dirk Schuster","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-012","url":null,"abstract":"Recent years have witnessed an expansion in the use of spatial conceptions for historical analysis.1 In the fields of Study of Religion and Theology specifically, researchers such as Kim Knott have introduced ‘space’ as an analytical category.2 This term is distinctly polysemic, encompassing, in the religious arena, physical space such as a church, mosque, or synagogue; geographic space such as a region or country; but also social space, perhaps a Baptist women’s choir or a Protestant congregation. In a broad sense, the first two areas, that is, physical and geographical, might be perceived as constructed space, and the third by its content. Our Baptist women’s choir, for instance, is a space in which women of Baptist belief meet in order to sing together. Thus, we already note a certain exclusivity by which entry into this space is governed: one must be a woman, wish to sing, and adhere to the Baptist faith in order to belong. Our Baptist women’s choir, however, is still not an ‘exclusive space,’ as its boundaries are permeable. It would be possible for this choir to accept men into its ranks, perhaps because there was no men’s choir available for those who would like to sing in a group. It would also be possible that the choir numbers among its members someone who does not sing, but performs administrative duties for the group. Furthermore, it would be possible to include non-Baptist members if appropriate, say, for inter-religious projects. In what follows, the term ‘exclusive space’ will extend the spatial conception regarding religion to the feature of ‘race’ (race referring to a racist categorization of humans). For this purpose, ‘exclusive space’ is to be understood in the sense that only a specific group of individuals ever has access to it. ‘Outsiders’ can never enter this ‘exclusive space.’ In this context, then, space becomes a social","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129605022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-005
A. V. D. Haven
When conversion and eschatology joined forces during Europe’s long Reformation period, it was usually to underscore religiously exclusivist claims. Eschatological expectations heightened the sense that those who adhered to the wrong beliefs, did not follow the correct practices, and did not belong to God’s sole favored religious community, should convert before it was too late. Thus, eschatologies of this period, also known as the Age of Conversion, tended to ground demands for conversion in exclusivist terms.2 This was the case for Christian communities in the Reformation, but it was also characteristic of contemporary Jewish eschatologies, which abandoned older traditions that had allowed for righteous Gentile ‘Sons of Noah’ to find salvation outside the Jewish community. Elisheva Carlebach, among other scholars, portrays early modern eschatologies – Christian as well as Jewish – in these terms:
{"title":"Eschatology and Conversion in the Sperling Letters","authors":"A. V. D. Haven","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-005","url":null,"abstract":"When conversion and eschatology joined forces during Europe’s long Reformation period, it was usually to underscore religiously exclusivist claims. Eschatological expectations heightened the sense that those who adhered to the wrong beliefs, did not follow the correct practices, and did not belong to God’s sole favored religious community, should convert before it was too late. Thus, eschatologies of this period, also known as the Age of Conversion, tended to ground demands for conversion in exclusivist terms.2 This was the case for Christian communities in the Reformation, but it was also characteristic of contemporary Jewish eschatologies, which abandoned older traditions that had allowed for righteous Gentile ‘Sons of Noah’ to find salvation outside the Jewish community. Elisheva Carlebach, among other scholars, portrays early modern eschatologies – Christian as well as Jewish – in these terms:","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125313738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-fm
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-fm","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-fm","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134502912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-015
J. Becke
{"title":"German Guilt and Hebrew Redemption","authors":"J. Becke","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116070946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-23DOI: 10.1515/9783110664713-010
J. Gleixner
In 1932, the “Svaz Čechů-židů v Ceskoslovenské republice” (Union of Czech-Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic) published a small booklet on the history of its movement. The text opened with the common ground of Jews and Czechs in the Bohemian land: both were heirs of the Czech reformation, struggling against Catholic Habsburg rule and its attempts at Germanization. Even more than the Czechs, the author claimed, the Jews had to overcome German influences to find their place within the nation. In the end, he concluded, they succeeded, and the democratic and tolerant Czechoslovak republic exemplified this successful Czech-Jewish trajectory. It was strikingly obvious to the author that, although heavily referencing the Czech reformation as an overall concept of the national history, this path did not end in the emergence of a Protestant nation, but in an entirely new religious and national entity.1 In a similar vein, František Žilka (1871– 1944), a prominent Czech Protestant clergyman, praised the republic’s founding president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850– 1937), calling him the embodiment of the religious foundations of the Czechoslovak state. Guiding Žilka’s religious vision was “humanity,” an idea at once Protestant and universal.2 Only by being religious in this way could a nation succeed.3
{"title":"Standard-bearers of Hussitism or Agents of Germanization?","authors":"J. Gleixner","doi":"10.1515/9783110664713-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664713-010","url":null,"abstract":"In 1932, the “Svaz Čechů-židů v Ceskoslovenské republice” (Union of Czech-Jews in the Czechoslovak Republic) published a small booklet on the history of its movement. The text opened with the common ground of Jews and Czechs in the Bohemian land: both were heirs of the Czech reformation, struggling against Catholic Habsburg rule and its attempts at Germanization. Even more than the Czechs, the author claimed, the Jews had to overcome German influences to find their place within the nation. In the end, he concluded, they succeeded, and the democratic and tolerant Czechoslovak republic exemplified this successful Czech-Jewish trajectory. It was strikingly obvious to the author that, although heavily referencing the Czech reformation as an overall concept of the national history, this path did not end in the emergence of a Protestant nation, but in an entirely new religious and national entity.1 In a similar vein, František Žilka (1871– 1944), a prominent Czech Protestant clergyman, praised the republic’s founding president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850– 1937), calling him the embodiment of the religious foundations of the Czechoslovak state. Guiding Žilka’s religious vision was “humanity,” an idea at once Protestant and universal.2 Only by being religious in this way could a nation succeed.3","PeriodicalId":300184,"journal":{"name":"Jews and Protestants","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129095776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}