EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2019/20

REPORT

International Junior Scholars Workshop, Association for Jewish Studies in Germany “Rural and Urban Jewries Between Tradition and Modernity”

University of Bamberg (online), March 14-15, 2021

Abstract

The entangled histories of “Rural and Urban Jewries between Tradition and Modernity” play a crucial role in our understanding of Jewish history including long-lasting patterns to this day strengthening a dichotomy between city and country. During the course of the workshop all research presentations focusing on different geographical regions made clear that these terminologies and perceived contractions and innovations are still important to be aware of. However, focusing on regional history and with its active historical protagonists within proves to be a challenge for innovative scholarship to this very day.

Main report

Event rationale

This international junior scholar workshop, entitled “Rural and Urban Jewries between Tradition and Modernity”, was intended to bring together a group of junior scholars from different universities from Europe, Israel and the United States to discuss their research projects in the areas of rural and urban Jewries. These young researchers were supported by experienced researchers who commented on their papers and provided crucial feedback.

The workshop focuses on the phenomenon of rural Jewries in their relationship to urban Jewries in modern times. The Association for Jewish Studies in Germany (Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien) was one of the organizers of the event. The association has been promoting young researchers since more than a decade, organizing workshops on different topics of Jewish history in a transdisciplinary and international context. Due to the Corona pandemic the format of the workshop had to be changed from in-person to virtual. The presentations and discussions were adapted accordingly.

The digitized format of the workshop provided for a frequent change of speaker and a mix of methods to keep the attention span of all participants as high as possible during the course of the two-day workshop.

Event Program

Overview: The workshop consisted of two sessions with a total of two senior scholars as Chair and a total of seven junior scholars (Session 1: 3; Session 2: 4). The sessions consisted of short lectures by the young researchers, a discussion of their presentations and an integrated joint reading seminar. At the end of the workshop, a concluding joint reading seminar was held, which was designed by a young researcher and a senior scholar. In preparation for the workshop, all active participants received the lecture texts and several relevant scientific articles to promote the discussion during the sessions and the joint reading seminar on day 2.

Introduction: Following a brief welcome, the organizing team (Rebekka Denz, M.A., University of Bamberg. Prof. Dr. Carsten Schapkow,  University of Potsdam/University of Oklahoma. Dr. Michael K. Schulz, University of Potsdam) introduced the concept of the two-day workshop. The organizers stressed that the dichotomy of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ characterizes our image of Jewish history and culture to this day. The dualism of “land equals stagnation” and “city equals modernization” is a common scholarly pattern we sought to question and discuss during the workshop. The relationship between city and countryside has mostly been seen as a one-way street and as an “either/or”, either city or country. This raises crucial questions such as: is this dichotomy tenable in light of recent research on transformation processes? What happened in-between city and countryside and in movements that headed in both directions?

And moreover, questions need be to be asked such as: What exactly is a “city Jew”? What exactly is a country Jew? Is a city Jew just a Jew who lives in the city? Is it sufficient to live in a village or a small town to fall into the category of “rural Jew”?

To be sure Jews lived in the country site as well as in the city. Judaism as such has not changed significantly due to the relocation of Jewish life from the medieval city to the early modern country. In addition, in the 19^th century Jewish life has not changed significantly due to trends of urbanization. Judaism as a religious “system” was always able to reform itself from within, Judaism adapts to the prevailing conditions brought to it or imposed on it from outside and inside.

Both types of settlement required the same facilities: 1.) cemetery, 2.) synagogue as a multifunctional house (place of prayer, assembly, religious study, and jurisdiction), 3.) The mikveh. All three together made up the basic equipment – be it in the village, in the small town or in the city.

„The Jewish Families of the village were close-knit. They shared each other’s joy and sorrows, and a helping hand was readily extended whenever necessary. All the men who were at home at the time attended the daily minyan. If someone failed to put in an appearance on Shabbath morning he was surely ill, and everyone would visit him.“ (Hugo Mandelbaum: Jewish Life in the Village Communities of Southern Germany, p. 48)

This is how Hugo Mandelbaum describes the Jewish cohesion in the country. This passage is taken from his childhood memories in Sommerhausen, in a small rural village near Würzburg. Mandelbaum was born in 1901 in Sommerhausen. In 1939, he emigrated to the United States. Mandelbaum left a beautiful vivid source from which the living environment of rural Jewry in Franconia speaks.

But it can be assumed that this cohesion can be identified independently of the question of town or village. Because regardless of whether in the country or in the city, a minyan was and is always necessary to celebrate a complete service in synagogues. The Jewish communities in the city (in Franconia and elsewhere) also needed this reliability in the formation of minjanim. And it cannot always be assumed that Jewish communities in the city inevitably had more men coming to the service than those in the countryside.

Session 1: “Migration and Transnationality”, with Frank Jacobs as chair with three speakers.

The first speaker Felicitas Remer spoke about “City and Country as Sites of Modernization and Nation-Building: The Urban-Rural Dualism and the Zionist Movement, c. 1890-1939”. In conclusion of her talk, Remer emphasizes that in the context of the Zionist Movement the country became a signifier for the anti-modern and alternative modernities. City and country, beyond their material realities, came to be associated with a much wider set of binary categories: industry/agriculture, modernity/tradition, estrangement/authenticity – endowing the categories “urban” and “rural” with the quality of a spatial shorthand for the comprehensive historical transformations of the past century. It appears, therefore, that rather than ruralism it was “rurbanism” that dominated the Zionist intellectual and practical engagement with the urban-rural binary – reflecting a broader ambivalence towards modernity. The alleged antagonism between city and country thus gains relevance not only as an analytical category, but as a concept used and negotiated by the contemporaries in an effort to reinterpret and shape the world that surrounded them and therefore has its own conceptual and material history.

In his presentation Shai Abadi discussed “The ’Old’ Rural Jew in Hebrew Revival Literature” to emphasize the complexity of terminology and their shift in meaning in the different geographical and temporal contexts. Abadi argues, the dualism of city and country has historically grown which turned out to be an excellent research tool in the field of literary research.

Max Lazar lectured on the topic of “New People in the Old Community: Rural Jewish Migration to Frankfurt am Main, 1933-1941.” In his lecture, Lazar focused on the history of events and reflected on the relationship between city and country in a historical dimension. He described the pull and push factors for the (forced) urbanization in the Nazi era and the concrete situation in Frankfurt, i.e., the Jewish infrastructure that the Jewish population in Frankfurt am Main could use.

Session 2: The ambivalences between “Country and City: Modernity and Tradition” were discussed in Session 2 from several perspectives and in different historical contexts. Monika Müller examined the topic of country Jews in the Cities with a focus on local history in the early modern period when discussing the Importance of Country and City in the Jewish History of Palatinate-Neuburg. Müller argued that the question of how urban or small-town Jewish life was in Pfalz-Neuburg probably neither arose contemporarily nor does it arise from a historical distance. If only for lack of alternatives, the difference – not only from an official perspective – between town and country was marked. The examples from Lauingen and Monheim show that criteria such as the question of bourgeoisie or the urban scope of power were not defined according to the size of the city. Rather, they were related to its nature as a city, to its dense, broader social stratification, to its situation of privilege and not least to its consciousness as a city. For Jewish life in Pfalz-Neuburg, the city always remained an important reference, often a decisive benchmark.

Also, the next presenter, Moritz Bauerfeind, reflected on “Franconian Reform Rabbis as Conciliators and Troublemakers“ in a local history perspective. Bauernfeind argued that the life and works of the Franconian Rabbis in the first half of the 19th century can not only be seen as situated between city and countryside but also as testimonies that speak to us from the realities the Jewish majority faced away from the centers of bourgeois education. He highlighted that discussion about reform and tradition was a very passionate one, also and especially in the backyards and peripheries of the German-Jewish world. The province did not lag behind the cities as much as most of mainstream historiography makes us believe.

In her lecture Maja Hultman discussed “The Modern Jewish Stockholmer as both City Jew and Country Jew” as a local history paradigm. The parallel identity construction of the city Jew and the country Jew constituted together the Jewish Stockholmer during the first half of the 20th century. The realization of Jewish incorporation into the Swedish national identity was negotiated on both platforms, with the rural identity being equally important as the urban identity.

Ekaterina Oleshkevich’s presentation “Rural and Urban Jewish Childhoods in the Russian Pale of Settlement: What are the Differences?” shifted our attention towards Eastern Europe again. Rural and urban Jewry enjoyed a very different status in the Jewish society of the Pale of Settlement. Jews residing in towns or shtetls tended to look down upon the rural Jews, whom they considered ignorami and simpletons. She argued that the childhood in the village was in a way freer. There were more possibilities for interaction with the Christians and the environment stimulated Jewish children to master the local language (both boys and girls — in contrast to the shtetl where usually it was considered appropriate for a girl to learn non-Jewish languages, not for a boy). When rural Jews visited the shtetlach, it was difficult for them and their children to get used to the environment, even if it was not a big city, but a small shtetl. Their rural habits and behaviors were a dead give-away and made them feel uneasy and sometimes embarrassed.

Summary of Discussion

Scholarship as we know it is represented to this day by major narratives, which is also true for the assumed dichotomy between the city and the country (side). Based on the vivid discussions during the course of the workshop the arguments of arguably all participants were shaped.

It became clear that focusing on regional history and its identities proves to be a challenge up to this very day. Or in other words can we assume that the regional was always connected to the global in the eyes of the people that scholars are studying today?

There was some common sense among the workshop participants that to be aware of terminology and definitions regarding city and countryside are and will remain to be necessary to begin with. However, as we the organizers hoped for, the dichotomy of city and country was questioned during the course of the workshop. Questions such as how to define a city and the countryside were investigated from different research angles with different regional and historical perspectives in mind.  In this regard Monika Mueller did emphasize the importance of small cities in the territory of Pfalz-Neuburg in her talk and during the discussions.

Similarly, Moritz Bauernfeind did emphasize the relevance of Southern Germany in order to go beyond paradigms of modernization focusing on Prussia exclusively. Moreover, he argued that urban environments were less enthusiastic about Reform than rural congregations. He asked, was the Jewish elite in Franconia really representative and were the rabbis really representative for what happened regarding modernization?

Cornelia Aust proposed an inclusive “connected history” that would integrate the city and country perspectives based on the “mental landscapes” (C. Aust) of its citizens. The term “citizens” in this regard was brought up during the discussions multiple times and did highlight that even before the emancipation of the Jews concepts of citizenship were negotiated in the city and the countryside.

The latter term, “mental landscapes”, was considered to be of relevance in particular when shifting towards the protagonists in question again by contextualizing the individual in the respective society s/he was living in. (Questions of gender could have been addressed more during the workshop as it actually happened, one might add here.)

In modern usage a sense of belonging can be assumed but due to the lack of sources in the early modern period and the middle ages cannot always supported.

Questions of social stratification and security, however, were raised multiple times. For instance, in Ekatarina Oleshkevich’s talk when focusing on Jewish childhoods in the pale of settlement.

Also, the question was asked if a focus on migration (histories) could not assist in solving the fixed contrast between city and country in scholarship. Eva Haverkamp also asked for older traditions of change not imposed by violence and opportunities the city or the countryside might promise.

Michael Schulz probed the need to understand history from the bottom up which would help to offer different insight even when this is questionable.

How does the local influence the broader perspective?

Without the local/the regional the global (perspective) would not come into being based on source material on the local level first of all (Frank Jacob)

Regions such as Franconia with its vivid Jewish living worlds need to be understood properly and not overlooked (Rebekka Denz)

Eva Haverkamp argued that already the late middle ages (late 13th and early 14th C.) were a point in history where questions of center and periphery were newly negotiated. And yet, this seemed to be another contrast that still proves to be viable.

In her talk Maja Hultman did shed light on questions of center and periphery when analyzing the Modern Jewish Stockholmer as both City Jew and Country Jew.

The other concept based on Shulamit Volkov’s scholarship would be the one of the inventions of Jewish tradition what Martha Stellmacher did highlight in her talk on Prague Jewry, namely how the usage of an organ before the emerging debates of Reform Judaism already existed. This was another strong point of reading the sources first before making general incorrect claims that then will remain in scholarship maybe forever.

The question of primary sources was raised at various points during the workshop and the lack thereof.

What to do with the existing scholarly paradigms on the dichotomy between city and country?

Be cautious to change those paradigms (Shai Abadi), be open to change the existing categories when it is fitting (Frank Jacob and Jonathan Schorsch).

Jonathan Schorsch alluded to the complex living situations of Sephardic Jews in the Americas. Here, fluctuation of identities were already viable in pre-modern times, but lack of sources makes it difficult to prove this.

And Frank Jacob emphasized that in regard to funding of research it is difficult to prove any new concepts because it is hard to pass overall accepted dichotomies (such as city and country for instance).

Hybridity as a concept further devolved by Moshe Rosman can be tempting as Rosman had suggested himself but also has its failures. The agenda of those writing history (today and then) should instead be kept in mind. Rosman maintains that besides, how much one has discovered the other crucial question is how much is my reading itself into the past what one does?

Final Program of the Workshop

Workshop Organisers: Rebekka Denz, M.A. (University of Bamberg), Prof. Dr. Carsten Schapkow (University of Potsdam/University of Oklahoma) and Dr. Michael K. Schulz (University of Potsdam).

Sunday, March 14, 2021

13:00 (plenum) Welcome, Concept of the Workshop, Introduction

Rebekka Denz, M.A. (University of Bamberg), Prof. Dr. Carsten Schapkow (University of Potsdam/University of Oklahoma) and Dr. Michael K. Schulz (University of Potsdam)

13:00 (2 small groups) Get Together – Work Together

Chairs: Dr. Cornelia Aust and Prof. Dr. Frank Jacob

14:45 Break

15:15 (plenum) Self Introduction

16:00 Break

16:15 – 18:45 (plenum, and small groups) Session 1 (with break)

Migration and Transnationality Chair: Prof, Dr. Frank Jacob (Nord University, Norway)

Felicitas Remer, MA (Free University of Berlin): City and Country as Sites of Modernization and Nation-Building: Urban and Rural Settlement in the Debates of German-Speaking Zionists, c. 1890-1939

Shai Abadi, MA (Tel Aviv University): The ‘Old’ Rural Jew in Hebrew Revival Literature

Max Lazar, MA (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) : “New People in the Old Gemeinde”: Rural Jewish Migration to Frankfurt am Main, 1933-1941

Discussion and a joint reading seminar

Monday, March 15, 2021

13:00 Session 2 (with break) Country and City: Modernity and Tradition

Chair: Dr. Cornelia Aust (University of Bielefeld)

Dr. Monika Müller (University of Augsburg): Country Jews in the Cities? – On the Importance of Country and City in the Jewish History of Pfalz-Neuburg

Moritz Bauerfeind, M.A. (University of Basel): Franconian Reform Rabbis as Conciliators and Troublemakers

PhD Maja Hultman (University of Gothenburg): The Modern Jewish Stockhol-mer as both City Jew and Country Jew

Ekaterina Oleshkevich, MA (Bar Ilan University): Rural and Urban Jewish Childhoods in the Russian Pale of Settlement: What are the Differences?

Discussion and a joint reading seminar

16:15 Break

16:45 (plenum and small groups) Joint reading seminar (with break)

Rural and Urban Jewries Between Tradition and Modernity Chair: Prof. Dr. Eva Haverkamp-Rott (LMU Munich) and Dr. des. Martha Stellmacher (Culture Coordination Office – NDFI4Culture, SLUB Dresden)

18:30 – 19:00 Resume

Rebekka Denz, M.A. (University of Bamberg), Prof. Dr. Carsten Schapkow (University of Potsdam/University of Oklahoma) and Dr. Michael K. Schulz (University of Potsdam)

Publicitiy

The event was publicized at least through the following channels:

Webpage Association for Jewish Studies in Germany (Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien): https://v-j-s.org/

Webpage University of Bamberg: https://www.uni-bamberg.de/judaistik/forschung/veranstaltungen/

Webpage Selma Stern Zentrum (Center for Jewish Studies, Berlin and Brandenburg):

https://www.selma-stern-zentrum.de/kalender/Andere-Anbieter/2021_03_14-15_RuralAndUrbanJewriesBamberg.html

Newsletters such as H-Judaic, H-Soz-Kult.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2020/21

REPORT

Nordic Postgraduate Forum in ancient and early Medieval Jewish History and Literature

22-23 September 2020

Dr Katharina E. Keim (co-applicant and co-organiser, Lund)

Dr Karin Hedner Zetterholm (lead applicant and co-organiser, Lund)

Prof Anders Runesson (co-applicant, Oslo)

Event Rationale

This event was designed to fulfil the following purposes: (i) to give doctoral students feedback on their work from experienced researchers; (ii) to support doctoral candidates in developing professional networks throughout the Nordic region; (iii) to develop closer cooperation and stronger networks between Jewish Studies scholars in the Nordic region (particularly through the newly-established Nordic Network for Jewish Studies); (iv) to raise the profile of Jewish Studies as a discipline in Nordic countries. As such, the title of the event was intentionally broad in order to allow students from a broader range of sub-disciplines to participate.

The organisers do not intend for this event to be a one-off meeting. Rather, it is hoped that it will offer a foundation for further meetings between postgraduate as well as early career researchers and established academic staff in Jewish Studies and related disciplines affiliated with Nordic institutions. The purpose of restricting the event’s presenters to those affiliated with Nordic institutions was to address the under-representation and under-funding of Jewish Studies in the region. Nordic scholars are often well-networked via direct co-operations and through European/North American learned societies, rather than as a collective of scholars across the region. This event is part of a programme designed to meet the challenge of developing the discipline of Jewish Studies in the region in order to create and consolidate networks, to collaborate on funding bids to Nordic (e.g., Nordforsk) and EU funds (e.g., EU individual and consortium funding, as well as mobility funding), and to make the case for continued (if not increased) public funding to support appointments and research in this area.

Event Programme

The programme consisted of six presentations and a text-reading masterclass that took place over two half days. The presentations were given by doctoral students affiliated with universities in the Nordic region. The presenters were all at different stages of their doctoral work, from those who were just beginning their projects to those who were nearing their programme’s conclusion. A short text from each presenter (project plan or excerpt from thesis work-in-progress) was pre-circulated two weeks prior to the event to those listed on the programme. These were then discussed in 45-minute slots, allowing 10-15 minutes for each presenter to summarise their paper before receiving comments from respondents and questions from the audience. At the conclusion of the first afternoon’s programme Prof Philip Alexander (FBA, Emeritus Manchester) gave a text-reading masterclass entitled, “’If they are not prophets they are sons of prophets’: Tosefta Pesahim 4:13-14 and its reception in the Yerushalmi and the Bavli.” A summary of the papers and the masterclass will be given below. The event took place in a hybrid fashion, with participants joining in person at Lund University and online via Zoom. For those who attended in person, precautions were taken to limit risks associated with the spread of Covid-19. 40 participants joined the event from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and the UK, contributing to a collegial and supportive discussion environment.

Summary of the papers and discussion

Ludvig Nyman, Lund University

“Paul’s use of Moses”

Nyman’s project addresses the challenges of understanding Paul’s use of traditions about Moses in the undisputed Pauline letters. How does Paul relate to the figure of Moses? How does Paul’s interpretation of the figure of Moses and Moses traditions help us to understand Paul’s scriptural world? And, how might reading Paul’s use of Moses alongside other relevant primary literature nuance our understanding of both Paul’s relationship to Scripture and to his Jewishness?

Daniel Leviathan, Lund University

“The Jewish Settlement in the Galilee During the Byzantine-Islamic Transition: A view through the Archaeological Remains of Synagogues”

Leviathan’s doctoral project builds on the work he did for his MA thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His MA project focussed on the state of synagogues in the Galilee during the Byzantine-Islamic transition, examining the impacts of iconoclasm, earthquakes, abandonment, as well as changes to the local population through the decline of the Jewish community in the Galilee in the early Islamic centuries. Leviathan illustrated a period of archaeological decline just as Jewish literary culture saw a significant revival.

Topias Taskanen, Åbo University

“The Abrahamic Promise (Gen 12:1-3) and its Reception in the Book of Jubilees”

Taskanen is writing his thesis on the Jacob story in Jubilees and is planning to develop his argument through three case studies illustrating the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and Jubilees. What is the relationship between Genesis and Jubilees? What is the nature of the Abrahamic promise, and how is it perceived with regard to whether it is a privilege or a burden? Taskanen also developed his argument further regarding the relationship between God and Israel through an analysis of the special emphasis in Jubilees on Jacob and his descendants.

Miriam Selén Gerson, Uppsala University

“Rabbinic interpretations of the sacrificial cult as a form of intimate meeting between God and Israel”

Selén Gerson presented a developing chapter from her thesis wherein she reads Song of Songs Rabbah and Seder Olam Rabbah with a focus on the relationship between God and Israel. Specifically, Selén Gwerson examines these texts with reference to anthropological theory and theological perspectives in order to explore rabbinic attitudes to Israelite Temple sacrifices. Her study throws light on the connection between Temple sacrifice, prayer, and Torah study in Rabbinic literature.

Jonatan Ådahl, Åbo University

“‘Oh Adam, where art thou?’ – Hosea 6:7 applied to Adam and Israel in Genesis Rabbah 19.9”

Ådahl presented a reading of Genesis Rabbah 19:9 (concerning Adam’s sin in the garden) alongside its intersecting verse of Hosea 6:7, arguing that the exegetes of Genesis Rabbah drew a strong comparison between the suffering and punishment of Adam after he had sinned with the suffering and punishment of Israel after they had sinned.

Lukas Hagel, Lund University

“Messiah in Ancient Jewish Texts”

Hagel presented his plan for his doctoral project that focusses on Paul’s conception of the Messiah. Coming from a Paul within Judaism perspective, Hagel asks whether Paul considers Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah. This means, according to Paul, that Jesus is the Messiah for the Jews, a question that scholars within the Paul within Judaism perspective have overlooked in favour of a focus on Jesus’ significance for the gentiles.

Text-reading masterclass

Prof. Philip Alexander (FBA, Emeritus Manchester) gave a well-attended text-reading masterclass focussed on a close reading of Tosefta Pesachim 4:13-14 and tracing the reception of its traditions in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. Alexander began with an introduction to the challenges of reading rabbinic texts, giving an overview of the problems of: (a) the texts and language; (b) the anonymous voice (that is, the Stam); (c) the transmission of Oral Torah; (d) the synoptic problem in rabbinic literature; and, (e) the historical and cultural contexts of the Talmuds. Alexander guided the group through the methods and style of rabbinic argumentation and highlighted the complex relationship between the rabbinic academies of Israel and Babylonia as reflected in the text.

Overview of the discussion

As noted above, texts from each of the presenters were circulated to the other presenters and respondents in advance of the event in order to increase the amount of time for discussion during each of the 45-minute slots. The event was supported by the contributions of a number of respondents, including:

• Philip Alexander (Professor Emeritus of Post-Biblical Jewish Studies, University of Manchester)
• Erik Alvstad (Senior Lecturer, Malmö University)
• Karin Hedner Zetterholm (Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Lund University)
• Katharina Keim (Researcher in Jewish Studies, Lund University)
• Anders Runesson (Professor of New Testament, University of Oslo)
• Blaženka Scheuer (Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible, Lund University)
• Andreas Westergren (Researcher in Patristics, Lund University)
• Magnus Zetterholm (Associate Professor New Testament Studies, Lund University)

Contributions from the respondents and the audience focussed on the argument of the presenters, their research questions and project design, as well as research methods, key terminology, approaches to primary sources and the sharing of additional secondary sources and specialist knowledge. The presenters have fed back to the organisers that the responses they received to their projects was of great help, and the audience was also appreciative of the opportunity to engage with the discussion in a supportive research environment.

Outcomes

(1) The facilitation of direct feedback to doctoral students from experienced researchers unaffiliated with their projects;

(2) The expansion of doctoral networks with colleagues and established faculty in Jewish Studies across the Nordic region;

(3) The development of a suitable framework for future events, as well as engaging colleagues from other Nordic institutions in planning similar events in other sub-disciplines in the future; and,

(4) To consolidate the emerging Nordic Network of Jewish Studies.

Further planned outputs include (1) the publication of short project presentations on the Nordic Network for Jewish Studies website; and, (2) a report for EAJS, to be cross published on the Nordic Network for Jewish Studies website.

The organisers would like to thank the European Association for Jewish Studies for supporting this event.

  EAJS Programme in European Jewish Studies

funded by the Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” (Berlin) .

2017/18 Academic Year

The EAJS is pleased to announce that three events will take place, or have already taken place, in the 2017/18 academic year as part of the Programme in European Jewish Studies:

1. EAJS Summer Laboratory for Young Genizah Researchers and those interested in the field [Munich, 6 – 9 September 2017]
2. E Pluribus Unum? Multidisciplinarity in Jewish Studies Programmes and Teaching [EAJS Workshop, Girona, 28 – 29 May 2017]
3. EAJS Roundtable on an International Program of MA Jewish Studies: Teaching Methods and Implementation Perspectives [Krakow, July 2018]

Abstracts for these events can be found below.

1. EAJS Summer Laboratory for Young Genizah Researchers and those interested in the field

Location and Date: Munich, 6 – 9 September 2017

Abstract

With the discovery of the Cairo Genizah one hundred and twenty years ago, researchers from diverse disciplines and fields gained access to a considerable and unprecedented collection of rare and original documents. Giving the diverse character of the material preserved, the Cairo Genizah continues to provide an inexhaustible source for interdisciplinary research involving scholars from an array of disciplines, spanning from India to Western Europe. The EAJS laboratory is intended to encourage young researchers (MA-students, PhD-Students and post-docs) to venture into the field of Genizah Studies and facilitate access to primary sources, as well as the available tools, through hands-on training and feedback by senior scholars.

2. E Pluribus Unum? Multidisciplinarity in Jewish Studies Programmes and Teaching

Location and Date: Girona, 28 – 29 May 2017

Abstract

The EAJS held a workshop in Girona dedicated to an exchange between colleagues from nearly a dozen European countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Ukraine, and United Kingdom), as well as from the United States and Israel, to discuss the potentials and challenges of the pluridisciplinary character of Jewish Studies.

3. EAJS Roundtable on an International Program of MA Jewish Studies: Teaching Methods and Implementation Perspectives 

Location and Date: Krakow, July 2018 (This roundtable will occur during the EAJS Congress in Krakow, on a date to be confirmed)

Abstract

This Roundtable invites leading scholars and administrative leaders to discuss teaching methods in Jewish studies in different universities; the difficulties and obstacles they face; and possible solutions to these problems; and to set up a working group of scholars and administrative leaders to work on the creation of a concept for an international Jewish studies MA programme.

* * *

2016/17 Academic Year

The EAJS is pleased to announce that two events, one Roundtable and one Laboratory, took place in the 2016/17 academic year as part of the Programme in European Jewish Studies:

1. Turning the Page: Jewish Print Cultures and Digital Humanities  [Amsterdam, 6 – 7 February 2017]
2. Yiddish Language and Culture. A Relay Station of Modernity and Lieu de Mémoire of Postmodernity  [Vienna, 13 – 14 February 2017]

Abstracts for these two events can be found below. Post-event reports for these events can be found using this link.

1. Turning the Page: Jewish Print Cultures and Digital Humanities (EAJS Roundtable)

Location and Date: Amsterdam, 6 – 7 February 2017

Abstract

Jewish Studies and the Digital Humanities with regard to early modern and modern Jewish print cultures. We will bring together Jewish Studies scholars from across Europe, Digital Humanities scholars and curators to discuss opportunities and challenges arising from the new technologies for the textual, cultural and social analysis of Jewish printed sources. The Roundtable will foster cooperation on existing and new projects, and it will formulate a specific research agenda for a pilot study. The exploration of Sephardic-Ashkenazic interaction as reflected in print culture will form a thematic anchor. Digital experience already accumulated in History and Modern Languages will serve as an inspiration.

2. Yiddish Language and Culture. A Relay Station of Modernity and Lieu de Mémoire of Postmodernity (EAJS Laboratory)

Location and Date: Vienna, 13 – 14 February 2017

Abstract

In current models and reflections on “new world literatures” translation plays a crucial role on the level of experience as well as in theoretical reflections (translational turn).

Yiddish literature and culture have been and are shaped by processes of encounter, transfer and transmission to a particularly high degree (e.g. Jewish tradition, politics of translation).

The proposed laboratory aims at confronting and expanding existing notions of translation in diverse fields of Yiddish cultural production:

• Translation of texts: focusing on translation processes and its actors
• Literary criticism
• Translational Literature (critical reflection on Transnational Literatures; Translating Holocaust Literature, the limits of translation)
• Mediality: transfer of genre and media change
• Perception of Yiddish (e.g. Ozick: English as Yiddish)

Applying current theoretical assumptions to Yiddish literature in historical and contemporary perspective we intend to draw together various realms of Yiddish Studies. The lab aims to extrapolate the multifold cultural interactions that have made Yiddish culture a relay station of Modernity and a lieu de mémoire of Postmodernity.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

Suppressed Historiography, Erased Memory? The Perception of the Shoah in East Central Europe during Socialist Rule

Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies, Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, 30 November – 1 December 2015

Main organizer:  Dr Stephan Stach (Aleksander Brückner Zentrum für Polenstudien, Halle)

Co-organizers: Dr Michal Frankl (Department of Jewish Studies and History of Antisemitism, Jewish Museum in Prague) and Professor Dr Yvonne Kleinmann (Aleksander Brückner Zentrum für Polenstudien, Halle)

 

From November 30 to December 1 2015 the Aleksander Brückner Center for Polish Studies hosted the workshop “Suppressed Historiography, Erased Memory?” at the Martin Luther University in Halle. The workshop was organised in cooperation with the Jewish Museum in Prague and made possible thanks to a generous subvention from the European Association for Jewish Studies’ Conference Grant Programme. Additional support was granted by Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds/ Česko-německý fond budoucnosti and Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

 

Event Rationale

During the period of socialist rule in East Central Europe, historical research into the perception of the Shoah focused mainly on the politics of history (Geschichtspolitik) of the socialist states. This perspective meant that the Shoah was either marginalized or politically exploited by the socialist governments. Other individuals or groups seeking to shape its perception, including Jewish Communities, Historians, Museums, and artists, were often ignored. This workshop aimed at a broader understanding of Shoah perception as a dynamic process within shifting boundaries of political restrictions and proposed to draw a wider picture that includes the agency of individuals and social groups in forming the historiography and memory of the Shoah. In addition, the workshop aimed to stimulate comparative and transnational approaches on the issue, which so far have been lacking.

 

Conference Report

The idea that during state socialism historiography of the Shoah was suppressed and its memory erased or at least manipulated and politically exploited by the ruling parties is still prevalent. However, recent research in several countries (especially Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) has raised reasonable doubt about this schematic and generalising characterisation. On November 30 and December 1 the workshop “Suppressed Historiography, Erased Memory? The Perception of the Shoah in East Central Europe during Socialist Rule” presented an opportunity for early career and senior researchers in this field to present and debate their findings and re-evaluate this mentioned assumption.

In his opening remarks Stephan Stach (Aleksander Brückner Center, Halle) pointed out that even though from the 1980s up to very recently the research literature on Shoah perception in Eastern Europe draws the image of a tabooed and distorted topic, there is much evidence proving that this is only minor part of the whole picture. According to Stach, the research activity of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny), along with representations of the Shoah in film, literature and art, and also, on different occasions, the public (press) debate, all demonstrate the existence of a discursive space for the Shoah in socialist East Central Europe.

However, the boundaries of this space were shifting between the 1940s and the 1980s and differed between the respective countries. Considering the large number of recent research results on single states and societies of the regions (four monographs in this field appeared in Germany alone in 2015[i]), Stach suggested to approach the issue in a comparative way to identify state socialist features of dealing with the Shoah. Another approach he suggested for future research is to trace transnational entanglements in Shoah research and commemoration, within both socialist East Central Europe and across the Iron Curtain.

The first panel of the conference, Socialist Shoah Historiography, looked at this subject by considering biographical studies of three researchers: Bernard Mark, Artur Eisenbach and Miroslav Karný. The two former had both been directors of the Warsaw Jewish Historical Institute, while the latter had been active in post-1968 Czechoslovakia. Gabriel Finder (University of Virginia, Charlottesville) described Bernard Mark’s development from being a historian, who interpreted the Shoah according to the requirements of the ruling party, to what he described as a “bona fide historian”. Finder showed how the emphasis on communist participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gradually decreased in Mark’s monographs from the late 1940’s to the 1960’s and how Mark finally freed himself from all communist interpretations in his last and only posthumously published book Megiles Oyshvits (The Scrolls of Auschwitz). Estera Flieger (University of Lodz) assessed Artur Eisenbach’s narrative strategies on the Shoah mainly in his extensive study Hitlerowska polityka zagłady Żydów (Nazi Policy of the Extermination of Jews), and confronted them with his biographical experience. Peter Hallama (independent scholar, Strasbourg) demonstrated how the former journalist of the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s central organ Rudé Pravo (Red Law) Miroslav Karný was able to research the Shoah and regularly publish on the issue within the official framework in exchange for certain ideological concessions. During the discussion that followed these presentations, the subject of the protagonists’ understanding of their own Jewishness and their experience of Shoah survival was especially brought up.

Panel 2, Shoah Remembrance in the Jewish & non-Jewish Sphere, was devoted to Shoah commemoration in and outside the Jewish communities. Miriam Schulz (Columbia University, New York) approached the question of Jewish commemoration activities throughout the Soviet Union by analysing the Yiddish language Journal Sovetish Heymland, which appeared from 1961. As Schulz showed, through Sovetish Heymland‘s reporting on local Jewish, and Yiddish speaking, commemoration groups the agency of Jewish survivors in forming Shoah memory in the Soviet Union became visible. Katarzyna Person (Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw) described how the underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, usually called “Ringelblum Archive” after its founder Emanuel Ringelblum, was initially treated as a symbol of Polish-Jewish endurance and resistance. However, according to Person, during the late 1940s and early 1950s it was increasingly interpreted within the ideological framework of anti-fascism and anti-imperialism and regarded as part of the all-Polish martyrdom in World War II. This in turn provoked harsh discussions among the Jewish historians in Warsaw and even led to an attempt to relocate the archive abroad. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) analysed the editing process of the various Yiddish and Polish editions of Ringelblum’s notes from the Warsaw Ghetto. She demonstrated how the assumption of what was considered appropriate for the reader and what had to be left out differed widely depending on the moment of publication and the expected readership. In the discussion following these presentations, the question of censorship and self-censorship was a key issue. The participants also raised the matter of which audiences certain publications addressed and what implications this had for the way the Shoah was written about.

Panel 3 was titled Eye Witnesses and their Role in Socialist Commemoration. It sought to highlight the role of witness and especially eye-witness accounts for the perception of the Shoah. Kata Bohus (Lichtenberg Kolleg, Göttingen) analysed the dissemination and perception of Anne Frank’s diary in Hungary, where a translation appeared in 1957, comparing it to the diary of the Hungarian-Jewish girl Éva Heyman, which had been published already in 1949. As Bohus pointed out, Anne Frank’s diary was much less controversial for both the Hungarian society and the government than Éva Heyman’s, since the latter raised problematic questions about the role of non-Jewish Hungarians during the Shoah and touched on other sensitive issues. Hannah Maischein (City Museum, Munich) approached the issue analysing Polish pictures portraying the Shoah and Polish-Jewish relations during World War II. As Maischein showed, many visualisations of the Shoah emerged in Poland before the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, whereas since that campaign a “forced forgetting” took place. However, the rise of the Solidarność movement and the beginning of a public debate on the role of non-Jewish Poles during the Shoah reversed this process and have since produced new visualisations. Jakub Mlynař (Charles University, Prague) delved into the question of how Czechoslovak survivors reflected the post-war representations of the Shoah in their narration, focusing on oral history interviews from the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation. This presentation sparked a lively discussion on whether the experience of Shoah survivors was really memorised differently in Eastern and Western post-war societies, as the phases of preoccupation with or ignorance of their own fate in the post-war years were very similar to those observed in survivor communities in the West. The politicisation of Shoah representations during Socialism, however, was addressed in the interviews far less than expected.

How the Shoah could be addressed in public debates was evaluated by Alexander Walther (Europäisches Kolleg, Jena), Tomasz Żukowski (Polish Acadamy of Science, Warsaw) and Richard S. Esbenshade (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) in the fourth panel, Discourses around the Shoah. Walther demonstrated how East German Journalists like Heinz Knobloch described in their works the voids that the Shoah had produced in German society by pointing at the traces of pre-war Jewish life in Berlin. Żukowski analysed the discourse in the 1960s on Polish help for Jews during the war, which, as he pointed out, made the actual fate of Jews during the Shoah secondary to the heroic role of Polish saviours. As a result, this discursive mechanism justified in the end an image of ungrateful and anti-Polish Jews. Esbenshade questioned the idea of a gap in Hungarian Shoah memory during the 1950s and 1960s by showing that the topic was in fact present. Representations of it could be found in mass-market literature, documentary collections and also at the pages of the Jewish Journal Új Élet (New Life), which were, however, adjusted to an anti-fascist narrative.

The fifth panel, Socialist Shoah Memorials & Jewish Sites of Memory, focused on memorial sites and Jewish sites of memory. Imke Hansen (Hugo Valentine Center, Uppsala) analysed how the site of the former concentration and death camp of Auschwitz and Birkenau became a memorial. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Hansen emphasised, Auschwitz was not yet a general code for the Shoah, especially in the minds of the former non-Jewish Polish inmates of the camp, who organised the memorial site. Yechiel Weizman (University of Haifa) approached the question of how far Jewish cemeteries, abandoned synagogues or their ruins, and other Jewish sites shaped the memory of the Shoah in communist Poland. Weizman, whose research methodology is largely inspired by social anthropology, showed using several examples how such sites became places for memory and even mourning in a local context. Gintarė Malinauskaitė (Humbolt University, Berlin) analysed the official Shoah commemoration in Soviet Lithuania using the example of the 9th Fortress in Kaunas. The narrative constructed around this memorial, she argued, was not only ideologically marked but also presented a gendered construction of memory.

The sixth and last panel was devoted to Shoah Representations in Film and Literature. Michala Lônčíková (Comenius University, Bratislava) analysed representations of the everyday life of Jews and non-Jews in Slovakia during the Shoah. To this end she focussed the novels St. Námestie sv Alžbety (Elisabeth’s Square) and Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street), which appeared in the 1960s and were both made into movies soon after. The latter film, The Shop on Main Street, which won an Oscar in 1966, generated an emotional debate in the Slovak language press in Czechoslovakia, as the way that the behaviour of Slovak society vis-a-vis the Jews was portrayed was rejected. By contrast, the Czech language press for its part reviewed the film in a generally positive way. The paper by Aránzazu Calderón Puerta’s (Warsaw University), analysing the Shoah narratives of six Polish films from the 1950s and 1960s, was read by another contributor, as she was not able to attend the workshop. As she underlined, many of the films, including Samson by Andrzej Wajda, Długa noc (The Long Night) by Janusz Nasfeter or Andrzej Brzozowski’s Przy torze kolejowym (By the Railway Track) took quite a critical stance towards the role of Poles. Anja Tippner (University of Hamburg) focused on the fictionalisation of the Shoah in Anatolii Rybakov’s Heavy Sand (Tyazhelnyi pesok). As Tippner demonstrated, Rybakov described many aspects of the Shoah which were rarely known in the Soviet Union. He did this, however, in a subversive way by presenting them as well known and well researched facts.

The workshop ended with a concluding discussion, which was introduced by the commentaries of Audrey Kichelewski (University of Strasbourg) and András Lénárt (National Széchényi Library, Budapest). In the comprehensive concluding discussion the participants of the workshop revisited selected aspects of the presentations. Among others the question concerning the relation of western (i.e. American and Western European) and East European Shoah Memory was raised. Richard Esbenshade asked whether it was the hegemony of the Western Shoah narrative that made the Eastern European model look exotic. Another discussant called for a comparative analysis of Shoah commemoration, for instance in France and Poland, in order to research if the differences in ‘East’ and ‘West’ were indeed as strong as so often proclaimed. Others saw many characterisations of East Central European Shoah Memory as a mirror of the lack of Western Memory.

 

Summary

The presented papers convincingly demonstrated that recent research moves far beyond the still-prevailing assumptions on Shoah Historiography and Memory in Eastern Europe during state socialism. Even though attempts to suppress research on and commemoration of the Shoah by state and party authorities can be identified between the late 1940s and 1989/91, this cannot be considered a general tendency. Representations of the Shoah surfaced on many occasions, but they were not only embedded in anti-fascist narratives. They were also part of memorial sites, literature, film and other expressions in the public sphere. In addition, depending on the strength of political control on the respective media, critical contributions on the behaviour of non-Jewish neighbours during the Shoah also appeared. Another observation that appeared in many papers was that a nationalist narrative that also influenced the way the Shoah was debated coexisted and competed with official narratives during state socialism. Although officially alien to the socialist ideology, nationalist narratives on the history of Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary played an important, and sometimes even the most important, role in settling the limits of what was speakable.

The papers and discussions during the workshop demonstrated that transnational as well as comparative approaches, which have largely been absent from research so far, are quite promising. Transnational approaches could lead to a better understanding of how knowledge on the Shoah was gained and spread within the Soviet-dominated bloc but also across the Iron Curtain. Comparative approaches between the different socialist countries would enable us to better qualify the influence of the political system or nationalist narratives on the perception of the Shoah. A comparison between the research, documentation and commemoration efforts in the countries of Eastern and Western Europe would in turn enable us to better evaluate the characteristic features of Eastern European Shoah memory.

 

Planned outcomes and Future Projects

Planned Outcomes

The workshop lead to (at least) two new co-operations. Firstly, the participants Kata Bohus and Peter Hallama and the co-organizer of the Workshop, Stephan Stach, agreed to commonly edit a volume on Shoah Historiography and Memory in socialist East Central Europe, which will assemble the workshop’s papers (see next sub-section). Secondly Gabriel Finder, Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov and Stephan Stach began discussing a joint project on the Warsaw Jewish Historian Bernard Mark, which might result in a workshop (on occasion, in 2016, of the 50th anniversary of Mark’s passing away) or even a small collective publication.

Planned Outputs

The immediate output of the conference will be three conference reports to be published in HSozKult (h-net), Judaica Bohemiae and Remembrance and Solidarity (special issue on the Shoah) which will appear in the next weeks or months. The high quality and innovative character of most of the papers encouraged the organizers to reconsider the originally planned form of publication (thematic issue of a Journal). In order to be able to publish a larger portion of the papers and to have a greater impact, it is now planned to publish an edited volume, preferably with an English language publishing house. The book will be edited by Kata Bohus, Peter Hallama and Stephan Stach.

 

Announcements of the workshop on the web

Announcements of the workshop were made on the following websites:

• Aleksander-Brückner-Zentrum für Polenstudien
• Jewish Museum in Prague
• H/Soz/Kult
• La Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah
• Pol-Int
• Polishhistory.pl

 

[i] Imke Hansen: „Nie wieder Auschwitz!“ Die Entstehung eines Symbols und der Alltag einer Gedenkstätte 1945-1955. Göttingen 2015; Peter Hallama: Nationale Helden und jüdische Opfer. Tschechische Repräsentationen des Holocaust. Göttingen 2015; Hannah Maischein: Augenzeugenschaft, Visualität, Politik. Polnische Erinnerungen an die deutsche Judenvernichtung. Göttingen 2015; Michael Zok: Die Darstellung der Judenvernichtung in Film, Fernsehen und politischer Publizistik der Volksrepublik Polen 1968-1989. Marburg 2015.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

 REPORT

The Role of Jewish Mysticism in Early Modern Philosophy and Science:

Kabbalah, “Atheism” and Non-Mechanical Philosophies of Nature in the 17th-18th Centuries

Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), 12-13 October 2015

Main organizer: Cristina Ciucu (National Center for Scientific Research, Paris)

Co-organizers: Sylvie Anne Goldberg (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) and Gad Freudenthal (National Center for Scientific Research, Paris)

 

Original mission statement

The purpose of this EAJS Conference was to facilitate horizontal, international and cross-disciplinary communication among (mainly European) scholars interested in studying the role of Jewish mysticism as ferment in the emergence of Early Modern European thought. To favour this line of research, we wished to bring together experts in different facets of the history of Early Modern thought, Jewish and non-Jewish, hoping that this collaborative effort could shed new light on the importance for European cultural history of its encounter with Jewish mysticism.

The Conference was to discuss the following four main interrelated themes:

1. Kabbalah’s alliance with different hermetic and alchemical traditions and the subsequent emergence of a new “Kabbalistic alchemy”, involving both philosophy and the emerging New Science;
2. The growing affinity between the notion of nature and that of the divine (with the key-role played by the concept of spiritus mundi) in its relation to non-mechanical philosophies of nature;
3. Kabbalah’s appeal to philosophers and free-thinkers, representatives of a “Spinozismus ante Spinozam”, and the emergence of a new form of pantheism nourished by the eclecticism of the humanist tradition;
4. The association of Jewish mysticism with pantheism and “atheism” triggered by the numerous Spinozist controversies (Leibniz vs Spinoza, Henry More vs Franciscus Cuperus, Johann Franz Buddeus vs Johann Georg Wachter, Jacobi vs Mendelssohn, etc.).

The expected (immediate and long-term) outcomes and outputs of this EAJS Conference were the following: (i) an innovative collective volume of the theme of the Conference, which would stimulate further research in this area; (ii) the creation of contacts and collaboration among scholars and advanced students; (iii) the contribution, on both practical and symbolic levels, to the disenclavement of (a segment of) Jewish Studies and the communication with other fields of scholarship.

 

Actual Event. Programme, interventions and discussions

Touching on Jewish studies and the history of Jewish thought, early modern and modern European intellectual history, the history of European philosophy and the history of science, this conference aimed at offering a more nuanced, contextualized and pluralistic view of the Early Modern intellectual world, by taking into consideration various heterodoxical religious elements. More precisely, it is from the vantage point of some particular forms of heterodoxy constituted by the various avatars of the Kabbalistic tradition  during the 17^th and 18^th centuries, that we attempted to take a new look at different aspects of early modern thought (with some of their institutional implications).

Among the numerous aspects of-, and stages in the process of encounter and hybridization between Jewish or Christianized Kabbalah and non-Jewish early modern thought – synthetically discussed in the Introductory presentation (Cristina Ciucu) –, four were directly approached during the Conference:

1) The alchemical marriage between the Kabbalistic symbolism and different forms of proto-chemical experimentalism and natural philosophy during the 17^th century.

Kabbalah offered a symbolic framework and – as was already the case with Paracelsus and Johann Baptista van Helmont – alchemy, medicine and chemistry were blended with Kabbalistic elements, sephirotic theosophy was associated with experimentalism. The birth of Episteme was assisted by Gnosis. Some of the tenets of this alliance, its contexts and its implications were explored in the presentations of Professors Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann and Bernd Roling. Professor Schmidt-Biggemann introduced us to the thought of the foundational figure of Heinrich Khunrath, a pioneer of the synthesis between Paracelsianism and Kabbalistic symbolism that would inform 17^th century’s natural philosophy. Professor Bernd Roling analyzed the growing influence, during the 18^th century, of a special form of Kabbalah (a Gothicized one) in a Sweden dominated by Paracelsianism. These case studies offered as well an insight into some of the historical and ideological mechanisms accounting for the appeal of Kabbalah in some parts of Europe.

2) The polemics and controversies around Spinoza’s monistic “kabbalism” helped forge and refine philosophical concepts and notions, while creating the conditions for the emergence of a nucleus of historical approach to the Kabbalistic tradition (for instance, the distinction operated in Buddeus’s Defense – and adopted by many subsequent  philosophers and historians – between the Luriarianic and the pre-Lurianic Kabbalah). These philosophical and theological debates, involving some major figures – like Bayle, Leibniz, Noel Aubert de Versé, Georg Wachter, Johann Franz Buddeus, Jacques Basnage, Jakob Brucker, Friedrich Jacobi, Moses Mendelssohn or Hegel, to quote just a few –, concern both the kabbalism of Spinoza, and the Spinozism (i.e. the pantheism) of the Kabbalah. They would propel both Spinoza and the Kabbalah at the forefront of European intellectual life. Dr. Mogens Laerke discussed one of the decisive moments/stages in the history of the Spinozist controversies, involving Georg Wachter’s famous Der Spinozismus im Jüdenthumb (1699), Buddeus’ response and defense in Defensio cabbalae Ebraeorum (1700) and the subsequent revision of Wachter’s initial position in his Elucidarius cabalisticus (1706). Dr. Laerke’s paper argued that-, and demonstrated how this episode will set the bases for future readings, misreadings and interpretations, up to 19^th century German idealism.

In order to fully seize the tents and implications of this episode, a closer look at the original problematic was indispensable. Professor Yitzhak Melamed’s paper (read by Dr. Mogens Laerke; Professor Melamed had to cancel his flight the very day of his departure, due to visa-related problems, but he sent his paper to be read and discussed) re-opened the question lying at the very origin of these intellectual debates, by analyzing the possible relation between the Spinozist system and the Lurianic Kabbalah (Isaac Saruq’s version) such as it was presented in Abraham Cohen of Herrera’s kabbalistico-philosophic syntheses Gates of Heaven (Puerta del Cielo, Amsterdam 1655). One of the most widely read Kabbalistic texts in the non-Jewish world, Herrera’s treatise has already been suggested as one of Spinoza’s sources (by Giuseppa Saccaro-Battisti, for instance). Professor Melamed’s paper sheds new light on this problem, by embarking upon a thorough examination of the Spinozist concepts of infinite substance and limitation, as compared to Herrera’s definitions of the tzimtzum and the emanation.

3) The discovery of the Lurianic Kabbalah, mainly due to the translations, studies and commentaries of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth and Francis Mercury van Helmont. The relations, friendships and correspondences these two Christian kabbalists established with various contemporary thinkers and philosophers (like Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Ann Conway or Leibniz) contributed to the crystallization of major philosophical concepts and ideas: new forms of panpsychism, monism, hylozoism or the concept of monad. Tracing back the notion of monad and its implications (including the concept of pre-established harmony) to the Renaissance Neoplatonic-hermetic-Kabbalistic syntheses and discussing the imprint of some “Kabbalistic” ideas (as transformed by Knorr von Rosenroth) on the vitalist stages in Leibniz’s philosophy would have ideally been the object of our Leibniz specialist’s intervention. Unfortunately, Professor Frédéric Nef could not be present to the event, but he agreed to contribute to the Proceedings. Seventeenth century philosophy was also at the core of Professor Brian Copenhaver’s paper. Prof. Copenhaver analyzed some aspects of the early modern thought in light of Henry More’s theosophy and Kabbalah interests, while trying to propose a (binary) framework for the analysis of complex positions like that of More or Newton: theosophy vs. modern science.

Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Quakers, alchemists, experimentalists: Kabbalah (under its various forms) exerted a special fascination and left a strong imprint on 17^th century English intellectual life, with implications for the history of science, philosophy, literature and politics. A historical survey of these multifarious phenomena – not unrelated to the millenarian movements and the resettlement of the Jews in England – was proposed by Professor György Szönyi Endre.  But if England represents a special case, it is by no means an exception. Professor Didier Kahn extended the discussions to more popular aspects of these phenomena, as reflected in the Abbé de Villar’s Le comte de Gabalis ou Entretiens sur les sciences secrètes (1670). Delving into the historical references and scorn “objects” of this humorous and very-widely read text, we can measure some of the impact and response to these “sciences secretes” among the non-initiates.

4) No processes, ideas or syntheses discussed during this EAJS Conference would have been possible without the active participation of Jewish philosophers and kabbalists. The engagement of Jewish intellectuals with their cultural and social surroundings stands as a major factor behind most of these developments. Professor Moshe Idel and Dr. Elke Morlok demonstrated this point by attending to two key figures of the 18^th century who deny and undo boundaries by operating and incarnating these syntheses among (Jewish and non-Jewish) philosophy of the Enlightenment, scientific thought and the Kabbalah: Salomon Maimon and Isaac Satanow. For Salomon Maimon, radical rationalism, skepticism, a neutral monistic view and the notion of anima mundi were equally prerequisites for a fecund scientific approach. In Professor Idel’s analysis, although Maimon certainly contributed to the re-opening of the Spinozist issue in German idealism, his pantheism, as well as his notion of material cause, can both be explained by means of his Kabbalistic background. Isaac Satanow displays the same inclination to synthetize rationalism and idealism, secular knowledge and tradition, science and Kabbalistic symbolism. Dr. Morlok offered an analysis of the role played by Kabbalistic symbolism in articulating contemporary scientific discoveries, rational philosophy and mysticism, in Satanow’s little-studied treatise Imre Binah.

Following each session, the discussions tackled punctual problems and questions concerning each presentation, as well as the following broader topics:

• The auto-definition of the Christian vs. Jewish Kabbalah (main discussants: Moshe Idel and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann);
• The issue of a comprehensive (alternative) theoretical model for the phenomena discussed, including a common reflection on existing models, such as Popkin’s “third force” (discussants: Brian Copenhaver, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, György Szönyi Endre and Cristina Ciucu).
• The role of the (Christianized) Kabbalistic tradition in the constitution of national identities, with their linguistic component (discussants: Bernd Roling, György Szönyi Endre, Maurice Kriegel and Brian Copenhaver).
• The relation between the Spinozist thought and 18^th century Jewish philosophers (primarily Salomon Maimon) (Yitzak Melamed’s position discussed by Moshe Idel, Elke Morlok, Cristina Ciucu and Mogens Laerke).
• A more general discussion on the notion of pantheism and of its genealogy (discussants: Mogens Laerke, Brian Copenhaver, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann).
• The issue – central in my initial statement, but not directly addressed in the different papers – of the opposition (beginning with the second half of the seventeenth century) to the emerging mechanist model, and of the role played by the Christianized Kabbalah in this dynamics (discussants: Moshe Idel, Mogens Laerke, Cristina Ciucu and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann).

 

Outcomes and outputs

The proceedings to this EAJS conference are intended to offer a comprehensive picture of the variegated positions (of philosophers, scientists, historians or theologians) and of the numerous disputations reflecting the reception and the (mis)interpretations of various elements of the Kabbalistic literature, as received and disseminated by non-Jewish scholars. They should contribute to forge less binary or dualistically construed representations of some of the processes that fashioned modernity, and (hopefully) overcome some persisting dyads of contemporary thought.

Oxford University Press and Brill will be approached during the following weeks. The chair-persons, as well as scholars who, for different reasons, could not participate in the conference – like Peter Forshaw (University of Amsterdam) or Frédéric Nef (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) – were invited to contribute.

As stated in the rationale, this conference aimed as well at setting the bases for “a long-lasting international cross-disciplinary network including early career scholars and established specialists”. Indeed, it helped create bonds among scholars (and students) and we hope it marks the beginning of a long-term institutional and scientific collaboration in terms of collective and individual publications, teaching and (further) conferences.

Cristina Ciucu

Paris, October 29, 2015 

 

Conference Posters:

1. Programme
2. Conference poster
3. Conference poster & programme

 

Websites promoting the conference:

http://societedesetudesjuives.org/role-jewish-mysticism-early-modern-philosophy-and-science-kabbalah-atheism-and-non-mechanical

https://www.academia.edu/16530568/Conference_EHESS_EAJS_Paris_12-13_Oct._2015