Ludwig Geiger as the Redactor of Jacob Burckhardt's Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien

Abstract

Whoever looks up term Judische or in Encyclopaedia Judaica, published some 30-odd years ago,1 quickly notes that it contains no such entry. Even in very detailed Index (Vol. 1) we find only one mention of Renaissance, referring here to reawakening of national idea in early Zionism.2 The CD-ROM version of Encyclopaedia Judaica, at least, leads reader to section on in extensive entry on German Literature, which first points out important Jewish literary contributions after World War I and then calls Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig philosophical leaders of Jewish renaissance.3 Other more current lexica confirm that a new interest in subject has emerged fairly recently. Above all, Michael Brenner's important 1996 study devoted to The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany deserves mention.4 It is no surprise that found its firm place in Judisches Lexikon of 1927 during Weimar Republic, published by Judischer Verlag in Berlin. This work was designed, according to its subtitle, to be an Encyclopaedic Handbook of Jewish Knowledge in Four Volumes and can be described as one of the outstanding creations of Jewish cultural renaissance during Weimar period, as Michael Brenner put it.5 Written by Zionist author and later well-known U. S. historian Hans Kohn (1891-1971), then resident in Jerusalem (1925-29), entry on defines it as the phenomenon that at