Speaking Jewish - Jewish Speak: Introduction (original) (raw)
Disseminating Jewish Literatures Introduction
Introduction This volume is dedicated to the rich multilingualism and polyphonyo fJ ewish literarywriting.Itoffers an interdisciplinary array of suggestions on issues of research and teachingr elated to further promotingthe integration of modern Jew-ish literary studies into the different philological disciplines. It collects the proceedings of the Gentner Symposium fundedb yt he Minerva Foundation, which was held at the Freie Universität Berlin from June 27 to 29,2 018. During this three-days ymposium at the Max Planck Society'sH arnack House, more than fifty scholars from aw ide rangeo fd isciplines in modern philologyd iscussed the integration of Jewish literature into research and teaching. Among the participants weres pecialists in American, Arabic, German, Hebrew,H ungarian, Romance and LatinA merican,S lavic, Turkish, and Yiddish literature as well as comparative literature. The symposium was conceiveda nd carried out in cooperation between the Freie Universität Berlin,the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, TelA vivUniversity,the University of Haifa, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. One point of departure for the joint initiative resulting in the publication of this volume was ac onversation about the fact that there is no permanent chair for Hebrew literature in Germany. While Hebrew literature is asubjectatuniver-sities worldwide, it surprisingly seems to be somewhat neglected in Germany. When we conducted as ample examination of the course catalogues from the last ten semesters at the fifteen largest German universities in German,S lavic, American, Romance, and comparative literarystudies, we discovered thatJewish literatures weren ot adequatelyr epresented in academict eaching. As ar esult, studentsa re neither givent he chance to study key texts of world literature nor the literary works in which manyo ft he challenges of our present moment are negotiated. Further discussion with European colleagues made it evident that this is not aphenomenonrestricted to Germany:major modern Jewishtexts written in Arabic, French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Yiddish do not form an integralp art of their respective national philologies in Germany, Europe, Israel, Latin America,o rt he United States.A third issue under discussion was the state of diasporic literatures in courses on Hebrew literature in Israel. More generally, we observed that in our current BA and MA courses,the focus on teachingthe basic gist of relevant understudied texts leavesv ery little room to introduce our studentst oafuller rangeo fw orld literature. Similarly, our day-today teachingr outine sometimes neglects more profound methodological reflections. Thus, the editors of this volume have joined forces with scholars from different philological disciplines drawing on different historical focuses and methodological approachesinorder to develop con-OpenAccess. ©2 020, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110619003-001 cretep roposals on how to address this lacuna, basedo nc ase studies from various languagec ultures. Despite its inherent transnationality,m uch of the researchi nto Jewish liter-atures continues to unfold within an ational framework-an approach thati s also traceable in hyphenated terms such as "Jewish-American" or "German-Jew-ish".I na ddition, the significance of analyzinga nd comparingw hat constitutes "Jewishness" in aGerman or Turkish, Christian or Muslim, literarycontext must be taken into account.The fact thatI slam has now become the second largest religious community in Europe shifts the discourse on Jewishl iteratures in unprecedented ways.Wem ust react to this.The process of modernization that Ju-daism has undergone, and which can be traced in its literaryh istory,o ffers ample opportunityt oc onnect with the challenges that Muslim cultures are facing .P reciselyb ecause our studentsh aved iverse backgrounds,wen eed to emphasize the numerous connections in ah istoricizing perspective rather thane s-sentializingc ulturald ifferences. Seeking to redefine and explore the sociological and culturalc onditions of different migrant experiences, diasporas tudies has unfolded new perspectives across disciplines in recent decades,a nd yet, as ystematic inclusion into the respective philological disciplines in Germany and Israel remains a desideratum. The volume at hand aims to develop ideas and concepts for bringing together different epistemological and textual approaches into the curricula and research programs of the corresponding departments of literary studies in Europe, Israel, and the States.J ewishl iteraturesf rom their ancient traditions to modernity-from the Bible, Mishna and Talmud, Kabbalah and Hasidism and beyond-chal-lengeour very notion of literature. Even works by authorsofJewish belongingin modernism alone-from Marcel Proust to Osip Mandelstam, from Bruno Schulz to Bernardo Kucinski, from Natalia Ginzburgt oH élène Cixous, from Paul Celan to Dan Pagis-not to mention contemporaryH ebrew,R ussian, and Pales-tinian writing in Israel, challengescholars to transcend the strict confines of national philologies and theirr espective disciplines. In his book From Continuity to Contiguity,D an Miron acknowledgest he fact that most authorsi nt he history of Jewish literary thinking came from multilingual environments and were deeplyi mmersed in the respective lingua franca in the literatures and cultures of their time.Such an observation is not without significance .M iron suggests the mappingo fa" modernJ ewish literaryc omplex" which is "vast,d isorderly,a nd somewhat diffuse",a nd which is "characterized by dualities,p arallelisms, occasional intersections, marginal overlapping, hybrids , similarities within dissimilarities, mobility, changeability" and more. While we share Miron'sp oly-perspectival conception of Jewish literatures, which challenges amonolithic, national understanding of what Jewish literature VI
The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People collects and preserves materials from Jewish communities, organizations and private individuals from all over the world. Established in 1939, it holds the archives of hundreds of Jewish communities, as well as of local, national and international Jewish organizations and the private collections of many outstanding Jewish personalities. The Archives hold the most extensive collection of documents, pinkassim (registers) and other records of Jewish history from the Middle Ages to the present day. This archive is unique in its linguistic diversity: throughout the ages, Jews used to live in various countries and speak - along with Yiddish and Hebrew - the languages of these counties. Thus, the collections in the archive are in dozens of different languages. In fact it is arguable that the linguistic diversity of the CAHJP's collections is probably the most extensive compared to other archives in the world. Multilinguism is part of our essence. The Archives, which recently became part of the National library of Israel is now working intensively on transferring the paper catalog to a digital one. Historically the Archives has catalogued material in the language it was created. However, the digital turn has raised many issues including that of language.
Contributions to the History of Concepts, Vol. 7, Issue 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 1-27
The article aims both to present the great potential of the field of modern European Jewish history to those who deal with conceptual history in other contexts and to demonstrate the potential of the conceptual historical project to those who deal with Jewish history. The first part illuminates the transformation of the Jewish languages in Eastern Europe–Hebrew and Yiddish–from their complex place in traditional Jewish society to the modern and secular Jewish experience. It then presents a few concrete examples for this process during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second part deals with the adaptation of Central and Western European languages within the internal Jewish discourse in these parts of Europe and presents examples from Germany, France and Hungary.