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The article is bringing forth a synthetic overview of Jewish historiography throughout the history, starting already with a brief focus on the Biblical background and Jewish Hellenistic historiography. It presents the reflections of historians of Jewish historiography on the main milestones in the story of writing the Jewish history and the processes they were part of, as well as the ideas and frameworks shaping the writing of such historiography in each of the historical periods, including the main issues and shape of the overall Jewish historiography today. It also includes a short overview of modern historiography on Jews in medieval Inner Austrian lands and in Slovenia.

In terms of historiographical potential and literary value, depictions of the lives of others are considered inferior to autobiographies. One finds autobiographies, which promise to provide exclusive insights into the historical inner worlds, epistemically more revealing. While their study has become a very important part of Jewish Studies, investigations into the life stories of others represent a notable research gap. This issue takes this remarkable bias in the perception of the two genres within Jewish Studies as its starting point. The contributions gathered here interrogate historical examples of biographical narrative with the aim of unlocking its historiographical potentials and thus highlighting the relevance of biographical writing for the study of Jewish cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Judaism and the City, Judaism in the City: A Historiographical Journey" deals with the topic "Jews and the City" as a relevant research theme in the field of Jewish studies. Various perspectives on the historiography of Judaism are presented, and topics such as the ghetto, port Jews, and religious minorities are examined. The article emphasizes the importance of places like Venice, Amsterdam, and Berlin for Jewish history and also mentions the role of Zionism and the Jewish diaspora in the United States. It also addresses the connection between religious minorities and the process of urbanization. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the spatial and social evolution of the network of writers in the Jerusalem-based periodical Ha-Me’asef during the years 1896 – 1914 as a compelling and dynamic example of transnational Jewish networks. The periodical, which was established by Rabbi Ben-Zion Abraham Koenka in 1896, was exceptional in that it aspired to reach beyond the Jerusalem social circle, from where it originated, and become the center of a global communication network. At its apex, some of the leading rabbinical figures in Palestine, the Middle-East, Europe and America became active writers. The journal eliminated the borders of the isolated spatial unit, in this case Jerusalem, and suggested in its place a new perception of ‘place’, which would be part of a relational and trans-local network. By using digital methodologies, such as geographic mapping (GIS) and network mapping (SNA), this article explores the interrelations between global expansion and local networks, and in particular the effects of globalization on the role of Jerusalem. It shows that a noticeable spatial expansion of the network coexisted at first with concealed spatial divides that separated between geographical regions, such as the Levant and Western Europe. Furthermore, it identifies social groups among the participating rabbis, and ongoing changes in the internal hierarchy of the contemporary rabbinical centers, as they were reflected in the periodical. The article shows that the success of the transnational network went hand in hand with the decline of Jerusalem as its center.

Professor Angelo Vivian Ph.D. (1942–1991), the son of an Italian policeman from Veneto region and a Slovene mother from Idrija, a Catholic priest, Judaist, university professor, translator, editor and publicist, is almost unknown to the Slovene public today. He received his doctorate in theology and philology from the Universities of Ljubljana (1970) and Florence (1974). As a scientist he worked at the Universities of Florence and Pisa, and since 1986 at the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish studies and the University of Cologne. For many years he had also successfully led the scientifically oriented Italian Association for the Study of Judaism. His research has been published in many languages, including Slovene, most notably in the scientific journal Egitto e Vicino Oriente from Pisa. At the various professional institutions, he searched for the remains of Hebrew inscriptions and books. With his excellent palaeographic knowledge, he was able to discover a number of texts important to our circumstances, which he processed and published in numerous articles. He died a sudden death during an excursion to Poland. His rich material, kept by his youngest brother Pietro, is located in Calcinaia, Tuscany, and is still awaiting proper evaluation.

The article outlines the provenance research project investigating Jewish studies� historic stock at the University Library of Freie Universit�t Berlin, which kicked off in November 2021. The project aims to identify and document traces of provenance and origin in the books and explore the fate of their readers. After a brief description of the formation and establishment of the department of Jewish studies, the main section will illustrate the actual workflow using the example of two closed case histories from the project to describe the work routine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Mass genealogy of Jewish community in Cracow in 19th and early 20th century provides extraordinary opportunity to investigate the process of creating a new social class: society of traditional merchants and peddlers produced modern attorneys and doctors. Now we are able to capture the dynamics of the process. For many reasons, Jewish community in Cracow was an outstanding specimen. About 1900 there were about 25,000 Jews in Cracow (about 28% of city population). Almost whole family structure of the population has been discovered and analyzed as a continuous network. Over 1200 vertices have been identified as Jagiellonian University students between 1850 and 1918. We know what and when they were studying and often in which house they were born, what was their family social status etc. These data are used to model several key features of new social class emerging: what was the impact of father’s vs mother’s family on the choice of education and how the choice influenced further marriage. Especially interesting (sometimes counterintuitive) are results about influence of family status on whether such student finished his or her studies with doctoral diploma or dropped out without it.

Mass genealogy of Jewish community in Cracow in 19th and early 20th century provides extraordinary opportunity to investigate the process of creating a new social class: society of traditional merchants and peddlers produced modern attorneys and doctors. Now we are able to capture the dynamics of the process. For many reasons, Jewish community in Cracow was an outstanding specimen. About 1900 there were about 25,000 Jews in Cracow (about 28% of city population). Almost whole family structure of the population has been discovered and analyzed as a continuous network. Over 1200 vertices have been identified as Jagiellonian University students between 1850 and 1918. We know what and when they were studying and often in which house they were born, what was their family social status etc. These data are used to model several key features of new social class emerging: what was the impact of father’s vs mother’s family on the choice of education and how the choice influenced further marriage. Especially interesting (sometimes counterintuitive) are results about influence of family status on whether such student finished his or her studies with doctoral diploma or dropped out without it.

Up to now, there were no adequate specialist information services for scientists concerning Jewish studies and Israel studies in Germany's research scene. The specialist information service (Fachinformationsdienst (FID)) Jewish studies is a contribution to close this gap. Most important is the FID portal as central platform and unique tool for research and proof-finding which unites specialist information of Jewish studies in their entire range. It greatly increases the worth of the information available by adapting and accumulating metadata as well as interlinking external resources via JudaicaLink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For whom and about what? The Polin Museum, Jewish historiography and Jews as a “Polish cause” The article presents main threads of the ongoing debate around the permanent exhibition of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Analyzing differences between two fields of research, Jewish studies and studies on Polish-Jewish relations, the article makes the case that many of the critical voices in this debate stem from a lack of understanding of the differences between these two fields of research; these in their turn arise from the current state of affairs in Poland, and the pressure of nationalism and ethnocentrism, exerted also on Polish historical debates. If the telling of the 1,000 years of the history of Jewish life in Poland were to concentrate on the attitudes of the majority population towards Jews, as the critics seem to suggest, should be the case, the Museum’s narrative would run the risk of falling into a teleological fallacy, whereby all previous events and processes are interpreted as mechanically leading to the Holocaust, and of omitting all of these elements of Jewish history which are not relevant from the perspective of the Holocaust and of antisemitism studies. Making anti-Jewish hatred or the attitudes of the general majority towards Jews into the central axis of Jewish history could deprive Jews of their own historical subjectivity. At the same time, the article points out where and how the narrative of the Polin Museum indeed insufficiently includes the subject of antisemitism as an important factor of Jewish experience and of Jewish history in Poland. Renewing the dialogue between representatives of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies is crucial from the standpoint of the current situation in Poland, in which the Polin Museum can be used by various actors in their attempts to build highly biased, politicized and uncritical versions of the history of Poland generally and of Polish attitudes towards the Jews specifically. This kind of understanding between the fields of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies and their representatives’ common struggle against such attempts require an understanding of the autonomy of and differences between these two fields of research. Dla kogo i o czym? Muzeum Polin, historiografia Żydów a Żydzi jako „sprawa polska” Artykuł ten przedstawia najważniejsze wątki krytycznej debaty wokół treści wystawy stałej Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin. Analizując różnice między dwoma polami badawczymi – studiami żydowskimi i studiami nad relacjami polsko-żydowskimi – autor broni tezy, że wiele krytycznych głosów w debacie wynika z niezrozumienia różnic między przedmiotem badań tych dwóch pól, po części wynikającego z obecnej sytuacji – panującego nacjonalizmu i etnocentryzmu, wywierających wpływ również na polskie debaty historyczne. Domaganie się od wystawy opowiadającej tysiącletnią historię Żydów na ziemiach polskich, aby koncentrowała się głównie na stosunku społeczeństwa większościowego do Żydów, grozi popełnieniem błędu teleologii, to jest interpretowaniem wcześniejszych wydarzeń i procesów jako nieuchronnie prowadzących do Zagłady, a także pomijaniem wszystkich tych elementów dziejów żydowskich, które z perspektywy Holokaustu i badań nad antysemityzmem nie mają znaczenia. Tego rodzaju postulaty i stojące za nimi metahistoryczne założenia grożą pozbawieniem Żydów roli podmiotów w ich własnej historii. Z drugiej strony autor tekstu wskazuje na elementy narracji wystawy stałej Muzeum Polin, w których rzeczywiście w niedostateczny sposób uwzględniona została problematyka antysemityzmu jako ważnego elementu żydowskiego doświadczenia i kluczowego czynnika dziejów Żydów w Polsce. Przywrócenie rzeczywistego dialogu i komunikacji pomiędzy przedstawicielami studiów żydowskich i badaczami relacji polsko-żydowskich, przy zachowaniu autonomii tych dwóch pól i zrozumieniu różnic pomiędzy nimi, jest też istotne z punktu widzenia niewątpliwych zagrożeń w postaci prób wykorzystania Muzeum Polin w budowie upolitycznionych, bezkrytycznych wizji historii Polski i stosunku Polaków do Żydów.

Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734-1815) was a dazzling figure in the European history of ideas. As a young student of theology at the pietistic Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum in Halle he showed great interest in Jewish studies and took part in missionary activities throughout Germany. As a teacher of oriental studies at the universities of Bützow and later of Rostock, both in Mecklenburg, he was in charge of an academic network with about 200 correspondents from all parts of Europe. Besides his numismatic and linguistic expertise he was deeply occupied with the »Jewish question«. Our investigation explores three topics in this field: Tychsen's participation in the debate on the early burial in Jewish communities in Mecklenburg, his part in the enrolment of the first medical students at Bützow and in granting them their medical degree from 1766 onwards, and his commitment to one of the most liberal Jewish emancipation edicts which was composed in Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1813. Our main question is how Tychsen's activities in these fields were interwoven with the Jewish striving for emancipation against the background of Haskala and Pietism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific research into the early modern development of Jewish Society within a Christian environment has increased considerably in recent years. On the occasion of the Sixteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies in 2013 five young scholars, led by Friedrich Battenberg, presented at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem -- in addition to these important lectures -- a panel under the heading of »Christian Politics towards Jews in the Region of Frankfurt and Mainz in Early Modern Times«. After a comprehensive introduction the following contribution contains printed versions of two of these lectures (Hausmann and Behr). Verena Kasper-Marienberg changed her subject, because she had to publish her Jerusalem lecture on »Criminal History and Jewish Daily Life« elsewhere. Gabriela Schlick-Bamberger, who spoke in Jerusalem on »Jewish brokers at the Frankfurt exchange«, will publish her contribution as part of her dissertation. Andreas Goeller's lecture about »Social and Economic Aspects in Jewish Life in Early Modern Germany« will be published in a later number of this journal. Thorsten Burger, who could not participate in the Jerusalem Congress, completed the collection presented here with his relevant contribution on the legislation applied to Jewish affairs by the Frankfurt authorities. The following introduction, as well as the four essays, permit short but profound glimpses into Jewish life conditions in Early Modern Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transit is the property of University of California, Berkeley, Department of German and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)