Yiddish, The Language Of Love: Isaac Wetzlar’s Libes Briv (1748/49) In The Context Of Jewish–Pietist Encounter

transversal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Rebekka Voß
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Central European ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Love Letter

Abstract This special section examines Isaac Wetzlar‘s Love Letter, a Yiddish proposal for the improvement of Jewish society, written in 1748/49 in Northern Germany. The articles concentrate on the links between Libes briv and the contours of German Pietism in order to initiate exploration of the complex relationship between Central European Judaism and eighteenth-century Pietism. This largely unrecognized arena of Jewish-Christian encounter is presented as a significant factor in a century that promoted modernity

A Tale of Two Revolutions: Hungary’s 1956 and the Un-doing of 1989

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Harms
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Central European ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
European Unity ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Museum Exhibitions

This article is part of the special section titled The Genealogies of Memory, guest edited by Ferenc Laczó and Joanna Wawrzyniak This article investigates the evolution of Hungary’s memory of 1956, from the counterrevolution to the dissident struggle for rehabilitation in the eighties, its relation to the change of regimes in 1989, and its subsequent appropriation for nationalist purposes in defiance of a European memory regime. Mnemonic warriors like Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and historian Mária Schmidt have championed 1956 as a struggle for freedom and independence and symbols of Hungarian martyrdom and bravery. Only recently a new-found Central European unity in adversity has been observed: the “counterrevolution” against the European Union. Perusing interviews, samizdat articles, public appeals and speeches, and other documentary evidence, including historical analyses, this article identifies mnemonic actors and strategies to assess the intricate relationship between 1956 and 1989. The analysis of museum exhibitions, statues, monuments, and national symbols helps reveal the varying significance ascribed to 1956 before and after 1989. The study relies on the conceptual groundwork of Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik. It contributes to arguments put forth by historians James Mark, Anna Seleny, Nora Borodziej, and Árpád von Klimó.

Demons, the Soul, and the Afterlife

2010 ◽  
pp. 194-209
Author(s):  
Sharon Flatto
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Central European ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Demonic

This chapter traces Ezekiel Landau's Prague works that incorporate kabbalistic teachings related to the soul, such as gilgul neshamot and ibur. It reviews Landau's Prague homilies and commentaries that are replete with kabbalistic concepts concerning demonic spirits and the afterlife. It also investigates writings, other Prague sources, and recent research on popular Jewish and non-Jewish culture in pre-modern Europe, which reveal that the Jews of Prague were obsessed with notions concerning the satanic realm, the soul, and the idea that invisible demons cause suffering. The chapter recounts how the themes on demons and the afterlife played a prominent role in the spiritual life and outlook of Prague Jews in numerous eighteenth-century eastern and central European communities. It discusses Landau's mythic and daring remarks concerning the soul and the demonic that predicated his mystical understanding of these entities.

The Conditions in Jewish Society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Middle Decades of the Eighteenth Century

1996 ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
East European ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.

Love Your Fellow As Yourself: Early Haskalah Reform As Pietist Renewal

transversal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-11
Author(s):  
Rebekka Voß
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Central European ◽  
Love Letter

Abstract This article demonstrates that Isaac Wetzlar’s Yiddish treatise Libes Briv (1748/49) substantially engages the concepts and initiatives encompassed by Pietist missionary efforts to Jews. As a calculated response to the challenge posed by Pietist missionaries and Christian critiques of Jewish life, the Love Letter should be read as a product of Jewish-Pietist interaction and entanglement. The article suggests that Wetzlar’s call for religious and social renewal competed with contemporaneous Christian Pietists over the preferable vision for eighteenthcentury Central European Jewry.

The Polish and Wider Central European Enlightenment – was there a Radical Tendency?

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-320
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Book History ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central European ◽  
European Context ◽  
Radical Enlightenment

Whereas during the first half of the eighteenth century the expression ‘oświecony’ in Polish was nearly always a religious metaphor, between the 1760s and the early nineteenth century the noun ‘oświeconie’ became secularized, broadened and given a quite revolutionary new meaning, denoting an intellectually grounded, rational and true understanding of things in contrast to how traditional religious authority understood things. This is well known to scholars and students alike. But the question now arises, with the rise over the last 20 to 30 years of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ as a fundamental new category in the humanities, how much has this category applicability in the Central European context? Studying book history and print culture, I shall argue, helps us to determine that in fact it does.

Women as Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Northern Germany: The Case of Stralsund, 1750–1830

1995 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Port City ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Wholesale Trade ◽  
International Commerce ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
Economic Profile

The purpose of this paper is to bring to our attention the important role of women in wholesale international commerce in eighteenth century northern Germany, using examples from Stralsund as a case study. (Stralsund, a port-city formerly in the Hanse, was at that time the capital of Swedish Pomerania and had a population, including garrison, of some 14,000 around 1800; it was an economic center of regional importance, specializing in the production of malt and the export of grain to Sweden and Western Europe). After sketching a social and economic profile of Stralsund's female merchants ca. 1750–1830, I will discuss the crucial issue of control, i.e., to what extent and how these women were able to operate independently within a political and legal system that favored men. In my conclusion, I suggest that women left, or were forced out of, the wholesale trade around 1850 as a result of political changes and a shift in the meaning of the concept of Bürger, rather than as a result of industrialization or market expansion. Throughout, I consider whether my observations about female merchants in Stralsund have any wider validity by comparing them with research on the commerce of other ports in Northern Europe and in North America.

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