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Hebrew is the language of large parts of the Bible. Its development is to be understood within the context of Jewish plurilingualism. Ancient, medieval, and early modern reflection on and practice of language interpreted it as a sacred language, divine language, and Jewish language in exile. Its more recent history is characterized by a series of radical transformations. In the 18th century, Hebrew took shape as a modern language of the Jewish nation in the Diaspora, while in the 19th century it…

Commission initiated by the US delegation at the peace negotiations of Versailles in July 1919, which was established to investigate anti-Jewish violence in Poland. The commission was set up in response to reports of pogroms in Pińsk and Vilnius in April 1919. This delegation, consisting of more than twenty members who conducted their research in numerous places in Poland during a two-month period, became known under the name of its head, Henry Morgenthau Sr. (1856–1946). Morgenthau presented a comprehensive report in early October 1919.Immediately after the founding of the R…

In 1751, there was a controversy between the rabbinic scholar Jakob Emden and the Hamburg Chief Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz, over the latter’s alleged Sabbatianism. As one of the most violent religious Jewish debates of the Early Modern period, it developed into a transnational confrontation about the legitimacy of traditional rabbinic authority. The Emden-Eybeschütz controversy, also known as the “amulet dispute,” was not only carried out in Jewish communities from Western to East Central Europe,…

Theatre criticism developed into an independent branch of journalism in 19th century Germany. In the Empire and Weimar Republic, it was especially Jewish authors who left their mark on the genre. Like journalism in general, theatre criticism opened up a field of activity for the academically trained, regardless of their origins, and, moreover, enabled participation in key cultural and social debates. In parallel, an antisemitic stereotype of “Jewish theatre criticism” developed. 1. IntroductionThe first reviews of dramas had already been appearing in early modern …

The Hungarian Jewish director and dramatist George Tabori (1914–2007) regarded himself as a “Spielmacher” (lit. playmaker) who shaped performances in close cooperation with the actors. In plays that broke taboos and focused on National Socialism and the Holocaust, he confronted the West German public with its past from the late 1960s onward, becoming one of the most important theatre artists of the Federal Republic. Deliberately challenging and disturbing, he opposed the dominant approac…

Founded in 1918 and opened in 1925, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem quickly developed into the most important higher education institution in the Yishuv and later in the state of Israel. Various ideological attitudes and institutional ideas encountered one another in the planning of the university. It was thus conceived as both a national Jewish institution and a research center with a universal orientation. In its early years until 1948, the university remained heavily influenced by this tension, especially the Faculty of Jewish Studies. 1. EmergenceThe notion of a Jewish un…

Since biblical times the religious commandments or obligations (Hebr.  mitsvot, sing. mitsvah) have constituted a central element of Jewish life. Since antiquity Jewish scholars have been engaged in formulating theological justifications for the mitsvot, and therefore their validity. The search for such justifications stems from the desire to develop a coherent doctrine on the essence of the mitsvot and to define the relationship between Jews and God as the giver of the mitsvot. Since the early modern era,…

Responsa refers to a literary genre consisting of written inquiries addressed to Halakhic authorities, and the latter’s detailed written answers, which were binding under religious law. Since biblical times, this method had been employed for the clarification of Halakhic difficulties, frequently urgent ones, relevant to everyday life. During the Middle Ages, responsa developed into one of the most widespread and important means of communication among the Jews in the Diaspora. Inquiries and respo…

In view of the devastations of the Second World War, efforts were multiplied to bring about an international legal codification of human rights in the context of the nascent United Nations. Already at the end of the 18th century, legal equality of the Jews had been brought about through the French Revolution and the human and civil rights promulgated in the American Constitution. The French-Jewish jurist and subsequent Nobel Peace Prize laureate René Cassin (1887–1976) had an essential influence on the drawing up of the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in Paris in 1948.1. The apo…

Trial in Paris in October 1927 concerning the assassination of the former president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic Symon Petliura by the Jewish watchmaker Shalom Schwarzbard. While the defendant Schwarzbard confessed to having shot Petliura in May 1926, the jury deemed the act to have been justifiable revenge, as they were in silent agreement with Schwarzbard that the Ukrainian politician had been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews. The attack led to an increase in polit…

In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Shoah ( sho’ah) is the term for catastrophic devastation; in modern Hebrew, it has been used since the early 1940s to describe the National Socialist crimes against European Jews, becoming a third synonym for the extermination of Jews alongside Holocaust and Khurbn. Unlike the term Holocaust, however, which includes other groups of victims as well, Shoah refers only to the genocide of Jews. The 1985 documentary Shoah by the French director Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), considered a milestone in the visual approaches to the Holocaust, c…

The history of the Institute for Social Research, which was founded in 1923 in Frankfurt am Main, is also the history of a growing preoccupation with Jewish topics. At first, the members systematically excluded all references to Judaism from their materialistically oriented social philosophy. Only with the studies of the 1940s on antisemitism did the institute also address issues of Jewish belonging. Through the canonization of their exile-related experiences in the federal German disco…

Nasi (from the Hebrew  nasa; “to raise,” “to raise up”) is used in Biblical Hebrew to mean patriarch, exilarch, or prince. Originally a term for tribal princes, the meaning of the term changed over time, coming to be used to denote political leadership, political representation, high social status, or as an honorific. Since its meaning was defined as “president” in Modern Hebrew, nasi has also denoted the president of the modern polity since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948.1. Biblical and rabbinic erasIn the Bible,  nasi refers to persons of high political or social …

A collective term for the reform laws enacted under Emperor Joseph II for non-Catholics in the Habsburg monarchy in the years 1781 to 1790. With regard to the position of the Jews, they lifted some legal and economic discrimination, while simultaneously asserting civic responsibilities. Although this did not amount to legal equality, the ordinances contributed to the dissolution of traditional Jewish community structures and promoted modernization processes among the Jewry. Throughout E…

More than 2.7 million Jewish emigrants left the European continent between 1880 and 1914 via Bremerhaven or Hamburg. Jewish migrants mainly from the Russian Empire embarked here on their way to North and South America. In particular, the port of Bremen became the point of passage of a complex emigration process organized by German authorities and shipping companies. Bremerhaven embodies an experience of transition which millions of Jewish emigrants gained on their way to the New World.1. German emigration portsThe significance of Bremerhaven as an important European port i…

Reine Rechtslehre (“Pure Theory of Law,” 1967) is the title of the major work published in 1934 by Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), a jurist of Jewish origin from Prague. Kelsen’s comprehensive œuvre is comprised primarily of theoretical legal writings on fundamental questions of international law, the state, and democracy. In  Reine Rechtslehre Kelsen presented a synthesis of his neo-Kantian and universalistically oriented general conception of law, the experienced historical origins of which can be located in Kelsen’s late Habsburg and Austrian-Jew…

The designation for the community of followers of the self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676; Smyrna), which formed in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire and can still be encountered to this day sporadically in Turkey. Like Sabbatai Zevi, many of his followers converted to Islam and created a synthesis of elements of Jewish and Islamic mysticism. The community’s religious syncretism led to their ejection from Judaism, but also separated them from the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. From th…

The Armenian genocide of 1915/1916 was considered by Jews, both before and during the Second World War, as a historical precedent for the expulsion and murder of a national and religious minority. In the same way, the Armenian rebellion on Musa Dagh (Turkish: Musa Dağı, Armenian: Musa Ler; Moses Mountain) was perceived as a model by the Jewish resistance in the ghettos. In no small measure did identification with the Armenian fate follow the reading of the 1933 novel Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel (1890–1945; “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” 1934), which was a lit…

The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 is an expression of the power constellation of World War I. The declaration, named after the British Foreign Secretary, expressed the British government's support for the Zionist aim of establishing a "Jewish national home" in Palestine. The Zionist movement regarded the declaration as giving long hoped-for international recognition to its efforts. It profited from the assumption on the part of the opposing parties in World War I, especially Britain and G…

The size of the global Jewish population was subject to drastic fluctuations between the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. It never comprised more than 1.5 million people. From the 18th century on, the numbers trended upward, parallel to the general demographic and reflecting various regional developments – high growth rates in traditionally rural Eastern Europe, the practice of urban family planning in Central and Western Europe. Factors specific to Jewish demographics, like…