Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture Online

The tannaitic term  epikoros (also  apikoros; pl.  apikorsim) is a rabbinical name for the heretic that goes back to the Greco-Roman school of Epicurean philosophy. In the Mishnah,  Epikoros is denied its “share of the world to come.” Strictly speaking, Epicureanism is the attempt at overcoming one's fear of the Gods by disputing their power over humans. In later Jewish sources, this originally precise meaning of the term is no longer common; it now reflects diverse deviations from accepted standards. Paradoxically, i…

The Sephardic-Portuguese synagogue (Esnoga), consecrated in 1675, is the most visible sign of the Jewish presence in Amsterdam. Its architecture and decorations not only give expression to the claim of the erstwhile conversos that they belonged to Dutch society, but also reflect the tradition and structure of the Portuguese community. In the 17th century, even before the actual age of emancipation, this community underwent a process of acculturation, which was set in motion by the specific chara…

A planned language, developed by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859–1917) and presented to the public in 1887. Esperanto was associated with universalistic ideas, which have their roots in the experiences of the Jewish founder of the language in an Eastern Europe that was marked by a multiplicity of linguistic cultures.1. On the language and its creatorIn Warsaw in 1887, the ophthalmologist Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof published, under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, his first textbook of a methodically created language,  Internacia Lingvo (International Language). The author’s pseudo…

A longer prose text, written with scholarly as well as literary ambition, which is always characterized in a twofold way, on the basis of the structured equilibrium between objective reference to reality and subjective imprinting by the author’s personality. Around 1900, it became the leading genre of cultural criticism. The essay, whether printed in journals or covering an entire monograph – a “genre among genres” (H. Hennecke) – was used with the intention of both progressive and conservative …

If the question of right action is viewed as the object of ethics in general, the term “Jewish ethics” designates first of all those norms and ideals by which human action is organized, or should be organized, in the context of Jewish culture and religion. Concretely, widely different historical, cultural, and religious phenomena of Judaism could be included in this concept, which overlap only partially with comparable manifestations in other cultures. In the modern period, alongside traditional…

The notion of ethos (in general usage, disposition, morals, temperament, ethical character, moral nature) was given a new meaning at the beginning of the 20th century by the cultural philosopher and sociologist David Koigen (1879–1933). It is dialectically opposed to the notion of ethics in the Jewish philosophy of religion. In contrast to their ethical understanding of Judaism, especially in Hermann Cohen, Koigen considered ethos as the central category for the definition of a social group.Hermann Cohen opens his comments on the idea of virtue in the tenth chapter of his work  Eth…

In view of phenomena with Europe-wide influence such as the Enlightenment and emancipation, Europe seemed to the Jews, since the end of the 18th century, to be both a challenge and a promise. Within modern Europe, Jewish self-understandings re-situated themselves. Particularly in in the field of literature, an intense reflection on the relationship between Judaism and Europe began. Here, Jewish hope in a connection between emancipation and Europeanness proved increasingly, over the course of the…

A non-governmental organization, founded in 1925 by representatives of national minorities in Europe. Its main demands were the granting of national cultural autonomy to the minorities of Europe and the reform of the Geneva system for the protection of minorities. German and Jewish delegates worked closely together in the European Congress of Nationalities, which met annually. With the accession to power of the National Socialists in 1933, the alliance of both groups was deprived of its foundati…