Pub Date : 2024-07-19DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybae008
Simone Lässig, Swen Steinberg
This special section presents transit as a research concept and demonstrates its analytical potential in six case studies. The contributions focus on Jewish refugees fleeing National Socialist persecution to states, colonies or dependent territories in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that received scant attention in older research. The results of this research derive from the ongoing International Standing Working Group ‘In Global Transit’, started by the German Historical Institute Washington in 2018 to explore spatial and temporal dimensions in global migration.
{"title":"Navigating Liminality: Jewish Refugees in Global Transit","authors":"Simone Lässig, Swen Steinberg","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybae008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This special section presents transit as a research concept and demonstrates its analytical potential in six case studies. The contributions focus on Jewish refugees fleeing National Socialist persecution to states, colonies or dependent territories in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that received scant attention in older research. The results of this research derive from the ongoing International Standing Working Group ‘In Global Transit’, started by the German Historical Institute Washington in 2018 to explore spatial and temporal dimensions in global migration.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":" 14","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141822408","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 : 2024-07-17DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybae004
Caroline Rupprecht
This article is about German-Jewish author Anna Seghers (1900–1983), who spent half of her productive life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Though Seghers is known for her works from the 1930s and 1940s such as The Seventh Cross (1942), about a prisoner who escapes from a concentration camp, little has been published about her writings under communism, after she returned from fourteen years of exile, having survived National Socialism while active in the resistance. Her mother and aunt were murdered in the Shoah, and Seghers ostensibly discontinued addressing the National Socialist German past once the GDR was founded (in 1949). However, as this article demonstrates, her ‘socialist realist’ novel, Die Entscheidung (1959), complicates this seeming erasure of Seghers's Jewish identity, which can be seen not only in response to the increasing antisemitism in eastern Europe during the Cold War, but also attests to her actual and continuous—albeit ‘hidden’—engagement with the Jewish culture and history of her childhood and youth. Through the autobiographical character Herbert Melzer, it becomes possible to identify secret references and allusions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in Qumran in 1947–1953—the same time at which Seghers set the novel. While she was confronted with surveillance, travel restrictions, and censorship, Seghers maintained her own personal exploration of Judaica, as evidenced by her published letters and the contents of her personal library (now the Anna Seghers Archive). This article argues that Seghers persisted in retaining and expressing her original Jewish self-identification through fiction, even in this, her seemingly most ‘socialist realist’ novel.
{"title":"Melzer and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Anna Seghers’s GDR novel Die Entscheidung (1959)","authors":"Caroline Rupprecht","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybae004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article is about German-Jewish author Anna Seghers (1900–1983), who spent half of her productive life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Though Seghers is known for her works from the 1930s and 1940s such as The Seventh Cross (1942), about a prisoner who escapes from a concentration camp, little has been published about her writings under communism, after she returned from fourteen years of exile, having survived National Socialism while active in the resistance. Her mother and aunt were murdered in the Shoah, and Seghers ostensibly discontinued addressing the National Socialist German past once the GDR was founded (in 1949). However, as this article demonstrates, her ‘socialist realist’ novel, Die Entscheidung (1959), complicates this seeming erasure of Seghers's Jewish identity, which can be seen not only in response to the increasing antisemitism in eastern Europe during the Cold War, but also attests to her actual and continuous—albeit ‘hidden’—engagement with the Jewish culture and history of her childhood and youth. Through the autobiographical character Herbert Melzer, it becomes possible to identify secret references and allusions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered in Qumran in 1947–1953—the same time at which Seghers set the novel. While she was confronted with surveillance, travel restrictions, and censorship, Seghers maintained her own personal exploration of Judaica, as evidenced by her published letters and the contents of her personal library (now the Anna Seghers Archive). This article argues that Seghers persisted in retaining and expressing her original Jewish self-identification through fiction, even in this, her seemingly most ‘socialist realist’ novel.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":" 42","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141831188","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 : 2024-03-05DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybae001
Lisa Gerlach
Letters of recommendation are a specific subgenre of professional writing that both have their own history and shape the histories of the people they recommend. In the context of National Socialist persecution, recommendations typically accompanied well-educated German-Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany. Such letters can be seen as relics of an established support system, trying to enable and/or ease the period of internal transit into new and mostly unknown territories. Many Jews experienced a phase of internal transit as they adjusted to new demands and new social structures. This phase was usually a difficult one, as they not only had to adjust to a new country but also to process the events leading up to their forced migration, as well as navigating the psychological and often financial difficulties of organizing refuge. This article aims to show what kinds of information such letters of recommendation contained about transit. Focusing on the United States and on Palestine, the article challenges the understanding of these countries purely as ‘destination countries’, and shows how immigrants had to live through processes of internal transit. It also asks what content was the most useful to include in letters of recommendation—what kind of armour of good words was needed in transit—and how that content may have differed between the United States and Palestine.
{"title":"‘I think he will be able to adjust’. Letters of Recommendation Accompanying Jewish Refugees in Transit during National Socialism","authors":"Lisa Gerlach","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybae001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybae001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Letters of recommendation are a specific subgenre of professional writing that both have their own history and shape the histories of the people they recommend. In the context of National Socialist persecution, recommendations typically accompanied well-educated German-Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany. Such letters can be seen as relics of an established support system, trying to enable and/or ease the period of internal transit into new and mostly unknown territories. Many Jews experienced a phase of internal transit as they adjusted to new demands and new social structures. This phase was usually a difficult one, as they not only had to adjust to a new country but also to process the events leading up to their forced migration, as well as navigating the psychological and often financial difficulties of organizing refuge. This article aims to show what kinds of information such letters of recommendation contained about transit. Focusing on the United States and on Palestine, the article challenges the understanding of these countries purely as ‘destination countries’, and shows how immigrants had to live through processes of internal transit. It also asks what content was the most useful to include in letters of recommendation—what kind of armour of good words was needed in transit—and how that content may have differed between the United States and Palestine.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"10 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140263327","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 : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad010
{"title":"Index to Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 2023","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139329918","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 : 2023-09-06DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad009
{"title":"1939 Emigrantensong","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133153770","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 : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad007
Hanja Dämon
Hungarian-born actress Franziska (or Franciska) Gaal was an interwar star whose film career spanned different countries and continents. Contemporary trade press and newspaper articles reveal her international fame during the 1930s, and trace her attempts to conquer Hollywood, where the studio system dictated that she lose weight and dye her hair. As she was unable to continue her career in Europe due to her Jewish heritage, this article examines her trajectory in Europe and the United States in the context of exile. It also interrogates how one of Europe’s top stars for an entire decade could fade from public memory and drift into oblivion, especially in the German-speaking countries where she was once so successful.
{"title":"‘Budapest’s Gift to the Movies’: Franziska Gaal’s Film Career in 1930s Europe and Hollywood","authors":"Hanja Dämon","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Hungarian-born actress Franziska (or Franciska) Gaal was an interwar star whose film career spanned different countries and continents. Contemporary trade press and newspaper articles reveal her international fame during the 1930s, and trace her attempts to conquer Hollywood, where the studio system dictated that she lose weight and dye her hair. As she was unable to continue her career in Europe due to her Jewish heritage, this article examines her trajectory in Europe and the United States in the context of exile. It also interrogates how one of Europe’s top stars for an entire decade could fade from public memory and drift into oblivion, especially in the German-speaking countries where she was once so successful.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121828471","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 : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad004
S. S. Shonkoff
Martin Buber’s anthologies of Hasidic tales remain some of his most widely read writings, but few have studied them intertextually vis-à-vis the original Hasidic sources. This article does so, focusing specifically on Buber’s representations of gender in Hasidism. Reading Buber’s tales hermeneutically for gender sheds light on Buber, Hasidism, and the dynamic confluence between them. Firstly, it helps us to identify key aspects of Buber’s representation of Hasidic theology. Regardless of his intentions, when Buber remoulded Hasidic sources to prioritize bodily concreteness over spiritual abstraction, meetings over meditations, and tales over treatises, he subverted theological-metaphysical constructions of gender in Hasidism. Secondly, reading the tales for gender illuminates key aspects of Buber’s representation of Hasidic communities. Buber often softened and omitted sexist elements in the original sources. While this may reveal his egalitarian impulses at times, the article demonstrates that Buber’s efforts to hide misogyny actually rendered women even less visible than they were in the original sources, as images of women dissolved into a sort of gender-blind, neutral (i.e. masculine) humanism. As a whole, Buber’s textual alterations raise thorny questions regarding the ethics of neo-Hasidism or any other movements that gloss over the shadows of historical phenomena.
{"title":"Gender in Martin Buber’s Hasidic Tales","authors":"S. S. Shonkoff","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Martin Buber’s anthologies of Hasidic tales remain some of his most widely read writings, but few have studied them intertextually vis-à-vis the original Hasidic sources. This article does so, focusing specifically on Buber’s representations of gender in Hasidism. Reading Buber’s tales hermeneutically for gender sheds light on Buber, Hasidism, and the dynamic confluence between them. Firstly, it helps us to identify key aspects of Buber’s representation of Hasidic theology. Regardless of his intentions, when Buber remoulded Hasidic sources to prioritize bodily concreteness over spiritual abstraction, meetings over meditations, and tales over treatises, he subverted theological-metaphysical constructions of gender in Hasidism. Secondly, reading the tales for gender illuminates key aspects of Buber’s representation of Hasidic communities. Buber often softened and omitted sexist elements in the original sources. While this may reveal his egalitarian impulses at times, the article demonstrates that Buber’s efforts to hide misogyny actually rendered women even less visible than they were in the original sources, as images of women dissolved into a sort of gender-blind, neutral (i.e. masculine) humanism. As a whole, Buber’s textual alterations raise thorny questions regarding the ethics of neo-Hasidism or any other movements that gloss over the shadows of historical phenomena.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129398630","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 : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad003
David Rechter
{"title":"In Memoriam: Professor Peter Pulzer","authors":"David Rechter","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116717442","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 : 2023-07-08DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad002
M. Zadoff, Noam Zadoff
The two youngest brothers of the Scholem family, Werner and Gerhard (later Gershom), became prominent personalities, each in his field. Werner was one of the leaders of the KPD, the German Communist Party, and Gershom became the founder of the field of Kabbalah research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. As a result of this prominence, both brothers were confronted throughout their lives with reactions to their physical appearance, which was perceived by the people they met as typically Jewish. These reactions came to reflect their exceptional position as political, philosophical and scholarly vanguards. Both Werner and Gershom were well aware of the reactions that their faces evoked, and each of them dealt with these ascriptions in different ways at different times: by either ignoring or employing them as they pursued their social and political goals, the brothers defined—and redefined—their relationship to Germany and developed a performative level of Jewishness. This article explores the questions: in what sense did their physical appearance in the eyes of others shape the self-perception of the two youngest Scholem brothers? And to what extent did this perception influence their complex relationship to Germany and Germans during the height of their public fame in Germany—in Werner's case the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, and for Gershom the post-war period? Although both of them were proponents of utopian ideas that offered a kind of salvation to the Jewish condition in turn-of-the-century Europe, this article argues that their looks and habitus determined their German-Jewish fate.
{"title":"On the Construction of Jewishness and the Inescapable Jewish Fate: The Cases of Werner and Gershom Scholem","authors":"M. Zadoff, Noam Zadoff","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The two youngest brothers of the Scholem family, Werner and Gerhard (later Gershom), became prominent personalities, each in his field. Werner was one of the leaders of the KPD, the German Communist Party, and Gershom became the founder of the field of Kabbalah research at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. As a result of this prominence, both brothers were confronted throughout their lives with reactions to their physical appearance, which was perceived by the people they met as typically Jewish. These reactions came to reflect their exceptional position as political, philosophical and scholarly vanguards. Both Werner and Gershom were well aware of the reactions that their faces evoked, and each of them dealt with these ascriptions in different ways at different times: by either ignoring or employing them as they pursued their social and political goals, the brothers defined—and redefined—their relationship to Germany and developed a performative level of Jewishness. This article explores the questions: in what sense did their physical appearance in the eyes of others shape the self-perception of the two youngest Scholem brothers? And to what extent did this perception influence their complex relationship to Germany and Germans during the height of their public fame in Germany—in Werner's case the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, and for Gershom the post-war period? Although both of them were proponents of utopian ideas that offered a kind of salvation to the Jewish condition in turn-of-the-century Europe, this article argues that their looks and habitus determined their German-Jewish fate.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131931356","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 : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybad001
R. Evers
This article examines אור נגה—Splendor Lucis, oder Glantz des Lichts, a bilingual German-Hebrew alchemical work written in 1745 by Alois von Sonnenfels (1705–1768), a scholar and translator at the Austrian imperial court, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1735. Splendor Lucis embodies a quest for ‘vera philosophia’, a true and pure knowledge, which its author seeks via the practical alchemical pursuit of discovering how to transmute base substances into gold using the legendary ‘Philosophers’ Stone’. Ultimately, Sonnenfels locates the secret to divine wisdom in the biblical figure of Job, and concludes that ‘vera philosophia’ is with God alone and cannot be grasped by humankind. This article analyses how Sonnenfels’ unique eighteenth-century text combines Jewish and Christian concepts with alchemical, kabbalistic, and literary symbols. Christian alchemists and Christian Hebraists often tried to prove that Christianity was the anticipated Messianic fulfilment of Judaism. By contrast, Sonnenfels presents a veiled discourse which carefully makes the case for the validity of Jewish texts and thus also for Judaism—under the watchful eye of the Catholic Church.
{"title":"The Quest for the Philosophers’ Stone: Alois von Sonnenfels’ ‘אור נגה—Splendor Lucis’, Vienna 1745","authors":"R. Evers","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybad001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybad001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines אור נגה—Splendor Lucis, oder Glantz des Lichts, a bilingual German-Hebrew alchemical work written in 1745 by Alois von Sonnenfels (1705–1768), a scholar and translator at the Austrian imperial court, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1735. Splendor Lucis embodies a quest for ‘vera philosophia’, a true and pure knowledge, which its author seeks via the practical alchemical pursuit of discovering how to transmute base substances into gold using the legendary ‘Philosophers’ Stone’. Ultimately, Sonnenfels locates the secret to divine wisdom in the biblical figure of Job, and concludes that ‘vera philosophia’ is with God alone and cannot be grasped by humankind. This article analyses how Sonnenfels’ unique eighteenth-century text combines Jewish and Christian concepts with alchemical, kabbalistic, and literary symbols. Christian alchemists and Christian Hebraists often tried to prove that Christianity was the anticipated Messianic fulfilment of Judaism. By contrast, Sonnenfels presents a veiled discourse which carefully makes the case for the validity of Jewish texts and thus also for Judaism—under the watchful eye of the Catholic Church.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131640132","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}
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