Hidden Findings: Textiles in Genizot

In July 1945, Rabbi Leo Baeck remarked that the Third Reich had destroyed the historical basis of German Jewry. ‘The history of Jews in Germany has found its end. It is impossible for it to come back. The chasm is too great’. Heinz Galinski, a survivor of Auschwitz who led West Berlin’s Jewish community until his death in 1992, could not have disagreed more strongly. ‘I have always held the view’, he observed, ‘that the Wannsee Conference cannot be the last word in the life of the Jewish community in Germany’. As these diverging views suggest, opting to live in the ‘land of the perpetrators’ represented both an unthinkable and a realistic choice. In the decade after the Holocaust, about 12,000 German-born Jews opted to remain in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and comprised about half of its Jewish community. Rooted in the German language and typically married to non-Jewish spouses, they still had some connections to Germany. xSuch cultural and personal ties did not exist for the other half of West Germany’s Jewish community – its East European Jews. Between 1945 and 1948, 230,000 Jews sought refuge in occupied Germany from the violent outbursts of antisemitism in eastern Europe. Although by 1949 only 15,000 East European Jews had taken permanent residence in the FRG, those who stayed behind profoundly impacted upon Jewish life. More religiously devout than their German-Jewish counterparts, they developed a rich cultural tradition located mostly in southern Germany. But their presence also complicated Jewish life. From the late nineteenth century, relations between German and East European Jews historically were tense and remained so in the early postwar years; the highly acculturated German Jews looked down upon their less assimilated, Yiddish-speaking brothers. In the first decade after the war, integrating these two groups emerged as one of the most pressing tasks for Jewish community leaders.

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a unique custom was performed at weddings in southern Germany. During the huppah ceremony, the groom threw a glass against a stone on the synagogue’s wall, decorated with a star, a flower-like shape, or a hexagram. After shattering the glass, the groom would turn his back to the wall and distance himself from it. This unique stone came to be known as the Huppahsteine or Trausteine, and sheds light on an area of research that has received little attention in scholarship, namely, the visual expression of mystical beliefs and magical practices among Jewish communities in southern Germany. These stones show how a visual symbol embodied mystical beliefs and created sympathetic magic during early modern Jewish weddings.

Abstract: Late antique rabbinic Judaism famously left no manuscript traces. Without material evidence regarding early rabbinic practices of reading and writing, scholars have struggled to close the theoretical gap between the physical remnants of epigraphic and ritual writing from Jewish communities in this period and the portraits of reading and writing preserved in medieval manuscripts of late antique rabbinic literature. Yet, Karen Stern has observed that virtually all of the methods adopted to date ultimately privilege rabbinic writings by treating them as the hermeneutical frame through which the material evidence is interpreted. This article asks if we can reverse that hermeneutic hierarchy by (re)reading the literary tradition in light of the insights brought to us by the traces of material writing from the period. As a case study, this article takes the material evidence that visitors to the Dura Europos synagogue engaged with the prepared pictorial texts and architectural spaces of the synagogue in deeply interactive ways – rubbing and touching images and even emending and adding their own words and images to those in the prepared environment. When we reconsider early rabbinic traditions in light of this popular interactive disposition towards text and image, it emerges that many early rabbinic thinkers likewise approached written and pictorial texts as inherently contingent products that invited the continued intervention of other human hands. Moreover, one discovers that many rabbinic texts theorized this interactive relationship as a manifestation of a fundamental continuity and permeability between text and the material world.

The paper presents the archaeological materials found in 2020 during the excavations of the burial ground Brusyany II, located in the south-western part of the Samara Bend. They belong to the Late Bronze Age (Pokrovka culture of the Srubnaya cultural community) and the Early Middle Age (Novinki cultural type of the Saltovo-Mayaki cultural community). “Pokrovka” materials are represented by four small pits made in the limestone rock, containing pottery, besides in one of them the remains of an infant were found. Nearby the Bronze Age objects the Novinki type burial of a man and horse was performed and covered by the barrow stone shell in the VIII century AD. Subsequently this burial was destroyed as a result of ritual actions to neutralize the remains of the buried, but the barrow site continued to be used by the “Novinki” population as the ritual object.

A 14th-century vessel from Immenstaad (Lake Constance, southern Germany)

The following article provides a preview of a recent find from the Bodensee (Lake Constance). It can be dated dendrochromologically to the second quarter of the 14th century and is to date the only material evidence, for Medieval shipping on Lake Constance[1]. A final publication is currently in preparation.

How was the re-emerging Jewish religious practice after 1945 shaped by traditions before the Shoah? To what extent was it influenced by new inspirations through migration and new cultural contacts? By analysing objects like prayer books, musical instruments, Torah scrolls, audio documents and prayer rooms, this volume shows how the post-war communities created new Jewish musical, architectural and artistic forms while abiding by the tradition. This peer-reviewed volume presents contributions to the conference „Jewish communities in Germany in Transition", held in July 2021, as well as the results of a related research project carried out by two university institutions and two museums: the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Technische Universität Braunschweig), the European Center for Jewish Music (Hanover University for Music, Drama and Media), the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, and the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia. For the first time, post war synagogues in Germany and their objects were researched on a broad and interdisciplinary basis – regarding history of architecture, art history of their furniture and ritual objects as well as liturgy and musicology. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) during the years 2018 to 2021 in its funding line „The Language of Objects".

Reviewed by: And I Will Dwell in Their Midst Leo Davids And I Will Dwell in Their Midst, by Etan Diamond. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 215 pp. $39.95 (c); $18.95 (p). This book is a thorough picture of the Orthodox Jewish community in suburban Toronto. In seven well-documented chapters, Diamond deals with the history, geog raphy, and culture of a major North American Jewish community, focusing on its paradoxical combination of modernity/consumerism with tradition/religiosity, as this has developed during the past 60 years or so. Its title is from Sh’mos/Exodus Chap. 25, verse 8. The author has included a number of interesting demographic tables and maps, making sure that the historical material is not merely impressionistic or anecdotal, but includes concrete data. One additional asset in the book is a four-page glossary, which defines for the less-informed reader many terms originating in Yiddish, Hebrew, or the Talmud’s Aramaic (pp. 161–164). Diamond shows a very good knowledge of the Toronto Jewish community, having resided here for a number of years during the 1990s. He is quite a cosmopolitan Jew, having lived in many communities across the continent. He points out the commonal ities, the essential similarity of Orthodox neighborhoods throughout Canada and the United States (p. xv). When he considered the available literature on modern Jewish life, Diamond found the term “Orthodox” used in reference to the highly visible East European sort of Ortho dox community, but little attention was being paid to the more modern, English- speaking Orthodox sector. This book, therefore, focuses on this much less visible modern or centrist Orthodox community, which has blossomed especially over the past 30 to 40 years. If one were to identify the book’s central theoretical issue, it is that the survival of a committed religious community in the modern world is paradoxical. After all, modernization theorists have long believed that high levels of affluence and schooling tend to be associated with secularism and the abandonment of strict religious practice. Thus, scholarly observers of the Jewish scene had long predicted the triumph of the Reform movement and the fading away of Jewish Orthodoxy (pp. 5–7). Most people who were not themselves associated with the Orthodox community saw it as rigid, demanding, and unlikely to survive in a society that emphasizes individual freedom and lifestyle choice. So the discovery by social scientists of a flourishing and growing North American Orthodox Jewish community posed a difficult question to be answered in this context of what we usually expect, regarding social and cultural change, under conditions of freedom and prosperity. In short, in this study Diamond sets out to explain not only what “Orthodox” Jewish means today, but why it is not just surviving but growing and prospering! [End Page 169] In regard to what sector of the Jewish community he is describing, Diamond presents a clear and valuable overview of the differences between centrist or modern Orthodoxy and the right wing, highly traditional sector (pp. 11–14). Unlike the ultra- Orthodox Hassidic or “Yeshivish” elements in the Jewish community, the population which Diamond studied is pro-Zionist, favors higher education and professional occupations, and dresses in normal, modern clothes. Thus, many would overlook people belonging to this part of the Orthodox community because they are not especially visible but blend in with the general cultural landscape of the larger society. Diamond argues that this ignores the important dynamic of the suburban Orthodox Jewish community, which has built a viable, even impressive, way of life despite all the predictions of Orthodoxy’s inevitable disappearance. He notes that even the right-wing Orthodox families, who apparently reject modern society and what it offers, have long ago decided to make their peace with the suburbs, their nice single-family homes, and an automobile-centered community. However, the focus of this book is not on those elements, whose Toronto location for the past several decades has remained in the Lawrence and Bathurst area. The book describes the northward growth of Toronto Jewry from the old Kensington Market ghetto—which was the center of the Jewish community before World War II—up Bathurst...

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry

This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received sufficient attention in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the vantage point of the synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respectively, the Near East and Europe; the final part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of "rabbinization" as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinization is a welcome contribution to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspectives on critical questions and allows us to rethink the tension between multiplicity and unity in Judaism during the first millennium CE.

The monastic settlements of the Tyrrhenian islands of the Tuscan archipelago have been a subject of interest since Late Antiquity. Based on a series of notes, author gives a review of the documentary sources, the material evidence and the landscapes of Gorgona, Capraia, Pianosa and Montecristo. A monographic analysis of the latter is performed. Island of Montecristo is today a low-human-impact biogenetic natural reserve. In particular, in the light of recent surveys conducted on the island, author analyses descriptions, unpublished drawings and measurements made in 1875 by Gaetano Chierici, a famous paleontologist.

Reviewed by Helga Embacher Department of History University of Salzburg Jüdische Gemeinden, Vereine, Stiftungen und Fonds: "Arisierung" und Restitution, by Shoshana Duizend-Jensen. Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Historikerkommission, Bd. 21/2. Vienna-München: Oldenburg Verlag, 2004. 347 pp. €49.80. Before the Anschluss in March 1938, the Viennese Jewish Community was one of the richest and liveliest in Europe. It ran schools, a home for the elderly, a hospital, and a home for blind Jews, to mention just a few of its institutions. Out of 200,000 Austrian Jews, most of them residents of Vienna, approximately 130,000 managed to escape Austria and 70,000 were killed in the Holocaust. In her book, a work commissioned by the Austrian Historians Commission, Shoshana Duizend-Jensen shows that in addition to the famous Jewish community of Vienna, 34 Jewish communities existed in the Austrian provinces. They owned property and ran synagogues. There were also more than 600 Jewish clubs and associations in Austria, such as the famous sport club Hakoah, a variety of religious and Zionist societies, fraternal lodges, and 325 charitable foundations. Jewish life in pre-war Vienna was active and heterogeneous. After giving an overview of the property owned by the Jewish communities and the numerous Jewish institutions before the Anschluss in 1938, Duizend-Jensen analyzes their "Aryanization" and liquidation, and finally discusses the complicated question of restitution. She shows that the liquidation was done in step-by-step fashion, whereby the so-called Stillhaltekommissar für Vereine, Organisationen und Verbände played the major role. While some clubs were dissolved immediately after the Anschluss, a few—mainly the Zionist associations—were permitted to exist for a while. The assets of those that were dissolved were transferred to the Stillhaltekommissarfür Vereine, Organisationen und Verbände and, to a major extent as well, to the Viennese Jewish community, whereby 25–40 percent of all assets were retained by the National Socialists in the form of fees such as the Aufbauumlage and Verwaltungsgebühr. The Viennese Jewish Community, on the other hand, was forced to use all the money transferred to it to support impoverished Jews and to finance the emigration and finally the deportation of Austrian Jews. It was also put under great pressure to sell its own property far below its market [End Page 168] value. As Austrian historian Doron Rabinovici1 has shown, the Jewish community was put into a very difficult position after the Anschluss. The National Socialists appointed the leaders of the Jewish community and forced them to fulfill their demands, which went as far as supporting and financing the deportation of those who failed to emigrate. By forcing the Jewish community to sell all the assets of Jewish institutions, the perpetrators could relieve themselves of the responsibility of supporting the impoverished Jewish population.2 Duizend-Jensen also discusses the expropriation of synagogues and prayer rooms (Betstuben) during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938 when synagogues were burned all over Germany and thousands of Jewish men sent to Dachau. In Vienna alone 42 synagogues were demolished and the land on which they had stood was Aryanized by individuals as well as by the city government. In addition, more than 110 prayer rooms were also dissolved. Duizend-Jensen points out that, like the synagogues, most of the prayer rooms also possessed ritual objects such as torah scrolls and prayer books, all of which disappeared or were destroyed. Concerning the question of restitution, Duizend-Jensen's publication makes clear that it is very hard to come up with an estimate of the total losses suffered by the Jewish community. She shows that 230 out of 300 pieces of Aryanized or liquidated real estate were restituted, whereas libraries, archives and torah scrolls were not returned to their rightful owners. She also emphasizes that in many cases the process of restitution turned out to be very complicated and protracted. In the end, the...

Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 is a collection of out-of-print primary sources and rare archival materials that document the diversity of Jewish experiences in the Caribbean, Suriname, the United States, and Canada during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (xxvi). Building on influential recent works of early American Jewish history that have embraced an Atlantic history approach, such as Atlantic Diasporas and The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, the materials in Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 highlight a “profoundly transnational cultural and religious community” that spanned much of the Atlantic world of the era (xxvii).1 Indeed, a third of the documents in the volume emerged from or make reference to a Jewish community located outside of North America, while a number of sources reveal how some Jewish families circulated throughout multiple American settlements during the period. Ultimately, Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 fits squarely within the new Atlantic world historiography by presenting a more fluid and broader geographical understanding of early American Jewry.In addition to an expanded understanding of the term “American,” the sources in Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 broaden the definition of who or what is a Jew in this period of great change between the high point of Sephardic immigration and the first major wave of German Jewish migration (xxvii). Rather than privileging religion, ethnicity, genealogy, or culture to define Jews, the editors employ “five variables in community identity: religious expression, language, race, gender, and age” (xl). This makes it possible for readers to appreciate a variety of Jewish experiences during the era, especially related to hybridity, syncretism, and the creole nature of early American Jewish life (xl).Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 consists of an introduction and five chapters: “Family Life,” “Life Cycles,” “Synagogue,” “Politics, Slavery, and Trade,” and “Literary Works and Religious Discourses.” A portion of the Introduction is dedicated to brief histories of the communities represented in the volume, but it is the editors’ review of the historiography of early American Jewish history and their explanation of the book’s methodological scope that make this section particularly worthwhile. Their goal is to move beyond prior collections that mainly focused on social history to provide a resource for those interested in material religion, intellectual history, and cultural studies (xliv). It is their belief that these types of sources will enable scholars to better access “the role previously under-represented groups played in early American Jewish life” (xlvii).“Family Life,” the book’s first chapter, consists of letters, estate inventories, a diary, family register, genealogy, account book, and a land transfer between a mother and daughter. These materials document the wide dispersal of Jewish kin and business networks throughout the ports of the Atlantic world and beyond (one letter is from a father to his son about to depart New York City for Calcutta) (38). They also highlight the intersection of family and commerce and the persistence of affectionate ties between people often separated by great distances. In keeping with the editors’ agenda to privilege sources that give voice to groups typically missing from previous collections of early American Jewish history, twelve of the documents in this section were written by or to women.“Life Cycles” is next and appropriately features material related to key milestones in the lives of community members. There is a registry of circumcisions, ketubot and marriage contracts, wills, epitaphs, and more in the chapter. Included in this section is an 1812 record of the conversion and subsequent circumcision of former Barbadian slave Isaac Lopez Brandon in Suriname, which is just one example of several sources that “pay special attention to the variety of experiences related to descendants of Jewish men and women of color” (xliii, 161–62). Additionally, the documents in “Life Cycles” are particularly noteworthy in illustrating the multiplicity of languages utilized by America’s Jews during this era. While all sources in Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 are presented in English, their original language—Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, French, or English—is listed along with who completed the modern translation for the book.“Synagogue,” the brief third chapter, consists primarily of congregational constitutions, laws, and protocols. These documents emphasize the centrality of the synagogue to the communal lives of Jews of the era, as well as the level of control the Mahamads attempted to exercise over their congregations. But, as indicated in the 1790 Constitution, Bylaws, and Charter of New York’s Shearith Israel, a degree of democratization can be observed in how congregations were now organizing themselves, which perhaps reflects the influence of republicanism on Jewish communities during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions (218–22). Other documents in this section highlight the continued religious connections of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’ diasporic Sephardic communities. For example, a Misheberarkh prayer from Curaçao mentions coreligionists in Newport, Rhode Island, New York City, Jamaica, and Suriname (202–4).The fourth chapter, “Politics, Slavery, and Trade,” features the greatest number of sources in the collection that relate to the Jewish involvement with the American Revolution. Particularly interesting are the materials that highlight the British retaliation against St. Eustatius for its support of American revolutionaries, which was especially devastating for the island’s vibrant Jewish population, who were banished. Even after the island was returned to Dutch control, the Jewish community never truly recovered and was all but nonexistent by the end of the period covered in this book. Other documents address privileges and rights of Jews in colonies or states, such as Canada, Suriname, and Maryland, including the latter’s famous 1826 “Jew Bill.” The Jewish engagement with slavery is another major theme of the chapter and there are several runaway slave advertisements along with a notice of a private slave sale. As this era also marked the beginning of the transatlantic abolitionist movement there are some manumission records as well, including two by leading Jewish Jamaican slave trafficker Alexandre Lindo in 1791 (305–8).The book’s last chapter, “Literary Works and Religious Discourses,” is its briefest, containing just thirteen documents. Nevertheless, this chapter is a crucial part of the editors’ efforts to utilize cultural materials to explore Jewish identity. To this end, they have included literature written by and about Jews, such as selections from Moses Hart’s Modern Religion and Richard Cumberland’s The Jew, A Comedy. Accordingly, the diversity of sources in this chapter calls attention to “how Jews created and perpetuated Jewish practices and identity in an era of change” (xlvii). Also in this section are inventories of books in personal collections or for sale by Jewish booksellers, highlighting this community’s immersion in the wider Atlantic world of ideas. One curious note is the decision to include in this volume an excerpt from John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of Five Years’ Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America, since this source is already widely available to scholars.One of the great strengths of Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 is that each of the volume’s 130 primary sources is accompanied by an introductory paragraph, which provides biographical information about individuals mentioned, along with other pertinent details, supplying the reader with the contemporary context in which a particular document was created. For example, the introduction to Mordecai Sheftall’s will, dated April 25, 1778, explains how he was taken prisoner by the British following their capture of Savannah during the American War of Independence. Because of his prominent role in supplying both the Georgia militia and the Continental Army with provisions, Sheftall was incarcerated aboard a prison ship, which was a notoriously deadly place to be confined during the war (91). These details thus make the timing of Sheftall’s will much more understandable.There are several other useful tools to help the reader make sense of the material in the volume. Among these is a glossary containing definitions of Hebrew, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin words found in these early Jewish American documents. A chronology of major events that informed the lives of Jews in the Atlantic world during the period, such as the founding of the first Ashkenazi congregation in the Americas in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1787, is also included (xxi). Finally, there are nine illustrations, including a miniature portrait, details of gravestones, photos of a synagogue and ritual bath, and a map of the major American Jewish communities of the era. The miniature portrait of Sarah Brandon Moses, reproduced in the book courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society, is extremely appropriate because her life trajectory—born a mulatto Christian slave in Barbados in 1798, Moses was later reclassified as white and died a wealthy New York Jew in 1829—touches on many of the collection’s themes, while the image itself sheds light on the material culture of the early nineteenth-century Americas (1–2).There are a few minor typos and proofreading errors in the introduction, such as mistakenly noting Jacob Rader Marcus’s life span as only 1895–1896 (he in fact lived from 1896 to 1995) (xxviii). A more significant issue, however, is the collection’s prohibitive price. Indeed, at $160, it is likely that this publication is too expensive for the casual consumer of either Jewish or Atlantic history. Moreover, as archives are increasingly being digitized and made available online to researchers free of cost or for a small fee, one wonders how many professional scholars will find it necessary to purchase this particular book. Nevertheless, because the vast majority of the documents in Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826 have yet to be scanned and made available online, and because the book features such excellent accompanying material, this volume is still a must-have acquisition for university libraries and Jewish historical institutions.

У статті висвітлюються результати рятівних робіт на пошкодженій пам’ятці археології на території Ташинської сільської ради Березанського району Миколаївської області, на північ від села Прогресівка. Розкривається історія археологічних робіт на Березанщині. Дається коротка характеристика поховань та попередня ідентифікація. Розглянуті три поховання, одне з яких – парне. Два поховання відносяться до бабинської історико-культурної спільноти кінця першої – початку другої чверті ІІ тисячоліття до Р.Х. а одне, з великою вірогідністю, до рубежу ер (сарматський час).