Nr 1 (37)

2016

Publication date: 05.12.2016

Description

Digitalizacja czasopisma „Studia Judaica” Vol. 19 (2016) nr 1 (37) oraz tłumaczenie
na język angielski, proof-reading i redakcja tekstów anglojęzycznych zostały
sfinansowane w ramach umowy Nr 620/P-DUN/2016 ze środków Ministra Nauki
i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę.

Licence: None

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief Stanisława Golinowska

Secretary Artur Markowski

Guest editor Katerina Capkova

Issue content

Introduction

Kateřina Čapková

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 5 - 9

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Building the Past: Historical Writing on the Jews of the Bohemian Crown Lands in the Early Modern Period

Rachel Greenblatt

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 11 - 40

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.001.5347

Abstract: Scholarship on the history of Jews in the early modern period, especially European Jewry, has flourished in recent years, clearly demonstrating that the period from c.1500 to c.1750 should be seen as distinct from both medieval and modern Jewish history. Mobility of people and information, changing relationships among rabbinic leaders and communal organizations, and the evolving nature of Jewish identity are among the characteristics that have been noted as unique to this period. This article surveys how historical scholarship related to Bohemian Jewry fits in that context, and suggests directions for moving that scholarship forward. Today’s historiography has grown from foundations laid in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums framework, by way of the establishment of the Jewish Museum in Prague and scholarly activities undertaken there, through the difficult years of World War II and Communist rule. Building on that tradition, the strengths of current historical writing on early modern Bohemian Jewry include material and print culture. Room remains for the development of broader, more synthetic analyses that link this regional history more closely with its central European and Jewish early modern surroundings. More research on specific areas such as Bohemian Jewish history through the lens of gender analysis, wide-ranging social history, and more, together with improved integration with broader historiographical trends, would both shed light on historical processes in the Bohemian Lands and improve understanding of early modern Jewish history as a whole.

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Modernity, Identity, and Beyond: Historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Ines Koeltzsch

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 41 - 64

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.002.5348

Abstract: The author discusses the main developments in the historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which has expanded considerably since the 1980s. The historiographical debates have been focused mainly on conceptions of modernization/modernity and identity/loyalty and are characterized by a desire to avoid linear and homogeneous ascriptions. Nevertheless, a number of gaps still exist in the research. So far, the Jewish history of the Bohemian Lands has been focused mainly on its center, Prague, and lacks distinct studies in comparative history, the history of cultural transfer and/or entangled history. These analytical restrictions need to be overcome in order to achieve a more succinct contextualization within modern European Jewish history.

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Modernity and Polish Jews: Recent Developments in Polish-Jewish Historiography

Marcin Wodziński

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 65 - 86

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.003.5349

Abstract: The article investigates the differing meanings employed in the concept of modernity by historians of the Polish Jews of the nineteenth century and how it has evolved over the last thirty years. It traces two essential traditions of modernist discourse on the nineteenth-century Polish Jews as following either process-oriented or project-oriented approaches. It also asks whether modernization theory and the concept of modernity are helpful in understanding the nineteenth-century history of the Polish Jews and whether there is anything specific that, when applying these notions to Polish-Jewish history, distinguishes it from the modernity discourse on other European Jewries.

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“Outside the Natural Order”: Temerl, the Female Hasid

Tsippi Kauffman

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 87 - 109

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.004.5350

Abstract: Women are far more present in Hasidic tales than they are in Hasidic teachings. Temerl Sonnenberg-Bergson, a famous wealthy patron of Poland’s tsadikim, is the heroine of a number of Hasidic tales. She is esteemed for her support of tsadikim, but is looked upon as a woman who deviates from the rigid social order of which she is a part, making her a threat to community norms. This article focuses on the literary figure of Temerl, who, within Hasidic discourse, comes to represent a kind of hermaphrodite: on the one hand, her wealth augments her material, feminine side and intensifies her sexual attraction; on the other, her power and influence construct her as masculine, casting the tsadik whom she supports in a feminine role which he must strive to overcome.

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Gender and Family in Jewish Historiography on the Bohemian Lands: A Critical Survey

Martina Niedhammer

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 111 - 128

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.005.5351

Abstract: Dealing with questions of gender and family, this article presents a critical survey of recent historiography on Jews in the Bohemian Lands. It assumes that the historiographical problems discussed in this field can be divided into three thematic groups: time, (gender) roles, and space. While a lot of research has been done on questions of gender roles ranging from the leeway that female and male worlds offered in religious and secular surroundings to ways women and men interacted on a daily basis, aspects of time, and especially space, have been largely neglected. Among the specific problems of Jewish historiography on the Bohemian Lands are its nearly exclusive focus on the capital Prague, the limited time frame covering mostly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the almost total lack of works dealing with men’s history.

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Beyond the Assimilationist Narrative: Historiography on the Jews of the Bohemian Lands and Poland after the Second World War

Kateřina Čapková

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 129 - 155

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.006.5352

Abstract: By comparing the historiography on postwar Jewish history in the Bohemian Lands and Poland the article is an analysis of not only the differences but also, indeed especially, the similarities between the paradigms of interpretation used in interpreting the Jewish experience in the two regions. The author argues that whereas the concept of assimilation was widely criticized and rejected for the earlier periods of Jewish history, it still dominates the works on the period after the Second World War. Consequently, the existence and experience of religious Jews have either been neglected or marginalized, and the history of Jews—who are often seen as a rather monolithic group of people—is misleadingly told as a story of linear assimilation. The author suggests alternatives to those nationalist and often pro-socialist interpretations.

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Miejsce rabina w gminie żydowskiej w Królestwie Polskim w I połowie XIX wieku. Spór o Zachariasza Weingotta w Częstochowie

Janusz Spyra

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 157 - 186

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.007.5353

Abstract: In the nineteenth century, Częstochowa was home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Poland, but for most of this time it had no communal rabbi approved by both the community and the state authorities. The first such rabbi, Zachariasz (Yisakhar) Weingott, was elected in 1822, but a mere two years later he was forced to resign. The attempts to elect a new rabbi led to major social conflicts and continued to fail, while the rabbinical duties were executed by unofficial rabbis (Jakub Brass and Mojżesz Majzel). It was only in 1839 that Weingott was reelected to the post of the rabbi and held that position until his death in 1852. As it seems, the conflict was animated by a competition between adherents of modernization and the traditional segments of the Jewish community in Częstochowa, including the Hasidim. As such, it was an expression of a typical communal conflict that plagued east European Jewish communities of the nineteenth century. What seems of special interest, however, is that a detailed analysis of the Częstochowa case makes it possible to trace other—familial and business—connections, behind the well-known ideological divisions, quite often transcending traditional divisions into modernist and traditionalist camps.

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Cichy powrót żydowskiego artysty z Breslau do Europejskiej Stolicy Kultury. Wystawa i katalog Sztuka prześladowana: Żydowski artysta Heinrich Tischler i jego wrocławskie środowisko /

Verfolgte Kunst: Der jüdische Künstler Heinrich Tischler und sein Breslauer Kreis w Muzeum Miejskim Wrocławia

Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia

Studia Judaica, Nr 1 (37), 2016, pp. 187 - 194

https://doi.org/10.4467/24500100STJ.16.008.5354

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