73135 research outputs found
Sort by
Redemption through sin: Judaism and heresy in interwar Europe.
No full textThis is a study of the encounter with the problem of heresy in Europe between the World Wars, in Germany and among Jews above all. It is first and foremost an intellectual history, though not exclusively so, and has four related aims. It argues, first, that the advent of a heretical ideal among Jews in the interwar period marked the definitive end of a chapter in German-Jewish history that began with Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn's gambit and the liberal Judaism that arose in its wake proved unworkable by this time, and the arrival of avowedly heretical forms of Jewish return signaled the end of his epoch. But we also find in this period the beginnings of a search for post-liberal modes of Jewish identity in which its predecessor endured in interesting and unexpected ways. Second, the dissertation reconstructs and analyzes the two leading languages of heresy in the interwar period, the gnostic and the pantheist. The first pined for salvation from a sinful world by the grace of a wholly transcendent, extramundane and therefore absent God, or a deus absconditus , and was associated in the interwar period with the Protestant representatives of dialectical theology. The pantheist language of heresy, by contrast, contested the gnostic spirit by divinizing the world, and was associated with the interconfessional revival of Spinoza. On the strength of this contextual reconstruction, the study aims, third, to reinterpret the philosophical careers of three important twentieth-century thinkers, all of them German-Jewish emigres: Hans Jonas, whose philosophical biology made him an unproclaimed "guru" to the German Green movment; Leo Strauss, the philosopher and unwitting father of a neo-conservative revolt in American politics; and Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of religion and Jewish culture. The study shows how their diverse projects all had origins in their encounter with the problem of heresy in interwar Europe. Their projects had also a common end: all resurrected the ancient Greek distinction between physis (nature) and nomos (law), and all contested normative Judaism by coming down squarely on the side of the former as the ground for Jewish identity in particular and human being more generally. Fourth and last, the dissertation makes an argument for the abiding salience of a theological dimension to European intellectual life between the wars and beyond. If nothing else, the stories presented here should alert us to the ways in which talk about God could be adapted for talk about nature, or politics, or art, to the ways in which discourses of the divine not only endure in this worldly world of ours, but flourish.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2002.School code: 0028
Catalyst for Israel : A Biography of Rudolf Sonneborn /
No full textBiography of American born entrepreneur of German-Jewish descend, who was arguably the most important American supporter of the creation of the State of Israel. Also included are aspects of Sonneborn’s private life, including his three marriages.Rudolf Sonneborn was born in Baltimore, MD, in 1898 to Siegmund and Camille Sonneborn. He was educated at Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities. He became the president of L. Sonneborn & Sons petroleum business. In July 1945, he and similarly situated Jewish industrialists and professionals met with David Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency. Out of this meeting a secret movement was born, later called the Sonneborn Institute, which helped to arm the Jewish forces in Palestine
Soviet Jews' Witness Accounts: Interview with Michael Yofin, Part I
No full textDigital recordingDigital finding aid
Die ehemalige Mutterstadter juedische Gemeinde, die Gurs-Deportation 1940 und Auschwitz : Herkuft, Aufbluehen, Vertreibung, Zuflucht und Tod, Gedenken, Neue Freundschaften.
No full textDraft for a book- and Internet publication about the Jewish community in the village of Mutterstadt in the Rhineland-Palatinate, concentrating on the deportations to the Gurs concentration camp in 1940
Israel Scholarships (Box 113, Folder 9)
No full textThis folder of material was located in Box 113. Folder originally titled: Israel Scholarships - 2002.Digital ImageDigital finding aid
Talking Hands, Shekhet, community for the deaf and hard of hearing, Minsk, Belarus
No full textDigital recordingDigital finding aid
Exemplarity and chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the nation of philosophy.
No full textThis dissertation is on the one hand a study of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida: It traces an aspect of Derrida's thought---his interest in philosophy's relationship to its specific cultural instantiations---from his earliest work on Husserlian phenomenology to his most recent writings. I particularly emphasize Derrida's explorations into the philosophical significance of assertions of national identity in the seminar cycle he conducted from 1984 to 1988 under the heading "philosophical nationality" and in a number of publications that can be seen as growing out of that project. These writings explore what he terms the "exemplary" structure of discourses of national affirmation---their quality of asserting the most universal, "philosophical" values in the name of the most particular national, cultural, or linguistic entities. I show that this elaboration of a theory of "exemplarism" is continuous with an ongoing preoccupation in Derrida's work with the question of how to account for philosophy's cultural determinations without giving up on its universalist aims---that is, without succumbing to a cultural relativism. Further, I discuss the ethical dimension of the problematic of "philosophical nationality" in view of Derrida's ongoing engagement with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In view of the prominent place of German-Jewish authors in the "philosophical nationality" corpus and of reflections on Jewishness in his considerations of universality and particularity, this dissertation pairs Derrida's philosophy with that of Franz Rosenzweig (which was also a primary influence on Levinas), who developed a theory of Judaism for which election is essential, and who understands this Jewish chosenness in an "exemplarist" sense: in terms of the Jews' role in a universal human history. Drawing in part on his reception of the philosophy of Hermann Cohen, I present Rosenzweig's theories of Judaism, translation, and time and history as both serving to illuminate, and as illuminated by, Derrida's writing on the problem of particularity and universality for philosophy, and on questions relating to the Judaic.Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Johns Hopkins University, 2002.School code: 0098
AHC interview with Norbert Treister.
No full textNorbert Treister was born on November 10, 1922 in Wiener Neustadt, Niederoesterreich (Lower Austria). There he lived with his parents Rosa and Isidor Treister, who owned and run a department store. Upon graduating from elementary and high school he started to attend a vocational school but was not able to continue his schooling after March 1938. The parents' retail store was soon taken over by a "Kommissarischer Verwalter" through a forced "sale". Shortly thereafter their house was taken over in the same manner. The Treisters left Wiener Neustadt and moved in with relatives in Vienna. They unsuccessfully applied for visas for several countries. One of Norbert Treister's cousins managed to go to England where was able to obtain the necessary papers for the rest of the family. The family stayed in London until May 1948 when they finally got visas for the USA. Norbert Treister arrived in New York on May 27th 1948 and his parents followed him in August of that year. There he worked for a lamp manufacturer, became involved in design and production and remained in this position until his retirement in 1988. He married Ilse Mueller, a native Berliner, and they had two children, Evelyn Packer (Treister) and Deborah Treister. Norbert and Ilse Treister lived in Jackson Heights, NY.Austrian Heritage Collectio
Diaries 1920-1959
No full text5 diaries written by Margaret Kahn's mother, Lisbeth Schmidt. Most of her early writings refer to travelling across Europe. A brief description is provided of events in 1933 when Nazis took over power in Germany. During Kristallnacht, her husband Fritz is taken to the police. They are able to leave Germany, first to Holland, then to the USA where they settle in New York. From 1950 on, all entries were written in English. Enclosed is also a letter from her parents to her daughter Margrit for her birthday, dated January 16, 1941, Amsterdam.Lisbeth Schmidt lived with her family in Frankfurt, Germany. In November 1938, the family received visas for England and Holland. They went to Amsterdam and waited for their ship to debark. On April 28, 1939, they arrived in Hoboken, USA. Her parents remained in Europe, and were deported to Westerbork, and then Auschwitz
Albert Grosshans Collection 1986-2002
No full textThe collection contains a report by Albert Grosshans on the visit of former Jewish citizens of Heilbronn to Heilbronn; a bound transcript of letters between Grosshans
and former Jewish citizens of Heilbronn; and a booklet with his memoirs for the years 1978 to 1989.Albert Grosshans is a non-Jewish Social Democrat, born in Sontheim (Württemberg). He worked in the shoe business in Heilbronn until he served as a soldier in the German
army in World War II. In 1956, Grosshans became the chairman of the Heilbronn section of the SPD. He prepared the visit of former Heilbronn Jews to their place of birth in the
1980s.Addendum from AR 5109Processed for digitizationSent for digitizationReturned from digitizationLinked to online manifestationdigitize