European Judaism

The desire to hear a ‘Jewish voice’ on a wide variety of topics in international forums explains the unexpected invitations that come the way of rabbis to offer insights from Jewish tradition. Conversely, the stimulation of speaking to issues outside the usual range on inner Jewish communal concerns offers a potential enrichment to our understanding of the depth and breadth of Jewish teachings.

Minister Steinmeier has been very generous in his remarks – for which I thank him most sincerely. And I would like to take this occasion at the opening of these comments, to tell him how much all the people who work with me around the world appreciate the support and the partnership of the people and Government of Germany in the work that we are doing. You have brought imagination, you have brought sophistication, you have brought flexibility to areas of need, areas of intellectual activity, which we consider unique, and I thank you for that.

I am not sure who proposed the phrase 'expanding the art and practice' but it lends itself to what has been preoccupying my professional journey for some years now. I wish to speak about this phrase, about the essence, the 'heart's core', the rhythms and pulse of what is required to build genuine constructive change, what it takes to heal deep divisions, what is vital and necessary to value peace in a polarized world.

Who were the Jews who settled in Germany after World War II and what kinds of communities did they build? How did their children, the generation of baby boomers, perceive and reflect on the historical situation in which they lived? And how have the communities changed in the aftermath of the German reunification in 1990? Instead of looking at this period from a historical angle, this paper will turn to examples of contemporary Jewish art in Germany, comparing and contrasting the cultural productions of the early postwar generations to the contemporary works of photographer Peter Loewy, writer Wladimir Kaminer and cinematographer Dani Levy. 60 years after the Shoah, how do these artists portray Jewish life in Germany? What are their feelings towards their country, their religion? Have they ?built houses? and do they intend to stay?

In examining the Jews of the former state of socialist Yugoslavia as a test case, this paper asks a familiar question: can Jews maintain their identity and survive as a distinctive group without the beliefs and practices of the Judaic religion? In their case, the change in the scope of secularization was abrupt and dramatic because of the devastation of the Holocaust and a contemporaneous radical political restructuring of society that denigrated religion. Although there were precedents of secular ideologies and movements, such as Zionism, and new inclinations to participate in broader movements, such as Communism, which influenced Jewish belief and behavior before the Second World War, the abruptness of the secularization and the postwar Jewish leadership's enthusiastic and nearly complete embrace of it put into action what can be called an experiment in secular Jewishness. It is this 'experiment' that is the focus of this paper.

The postwar European Jew has been cited as the guardian of memory in Europe, as the conscience of the West in Europe and as a litmus test for that continent's democracy. As the Jews have no geographical particularity in Europe, and could once be found throughout, some suggest they may even be the truest of Europeans. Yet while the circumstances of Western Jewish experience have often been presented as a means through which to inform contemporary discussions on group membership, when it comes to European integration the Jews have often been silent. Why?

The history of international Jewish student organizations can be traced back to the foundation of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) in 1924 in Antwerp, Belgium. The WUJS was primarily the brainchild of its first chairperson, the Austrian Zvi Lauterpacht who initiated the organization to fight against the numerus clausus, a quota restricting the acceptance of Jewish students to institutions of higher education. Lauterbach managed to involve many intellectuals in the students' struggle, most prominently Albert Einstein. In 1925, when invited to become the first WUJS president, Einstein accepted immediately.

Maurice Friedman, Buber's biographer, writes of the controversy between Buber and Scholem that it 'touches on the soil of tragedy'. I will attempt to suggest some reasons why this was so. And then I will look at three pieces on Buber by Scholem, first, 'Martin Buber's Conception of Judaism', second, Scholem's tribute given 'At the Completion of Buber's Translation of the Bible', and third, 'Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism'. I shall begin by giving some account of the early years of each which provides the background for the conflict between these two great but incompatible men.

As we returned south in the gloaming to Portbou, the doubts resurfaced. The Right is gathering strength again, not least in France and Spain. The borders may be open within Europe, but they remain largely closed to refugees and asylum-seekers from beyond Europe's borders. These nameless people include the bodies washed up every week on the shores of the Straits of Gibraltar, Africans trying in vain to escape tyranny, war and hatred and - the greatest oppression of all - poverty. What happened at Portbou is important to all of us. We all need to descend that staircase, confront our own mortality, confront the harm we do every day to one another and to our planet. The crimes that are committed by soldiers, police and bureaucrats - in our names.

The spiritual world of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud contained two intrinsically opposing elements, that were forced to coexist in the Talmudic corpus, in a tense relationship not without outright clashes. The law, that is a very 'male' creation, is by its very nature conformist, and tends to create a uniform and unyielding, hierarchical, and institutionalized structure. On the other hand, the 'feminine' aggadah (the nonlegal portions of the Talmud and midrashim) characteristically lacks a rigid and obligatory core. While the aggadah might seem like mere window dressing for the profound halakhic discussions in the Talmud, it strikes home when it presents the weaknesses of the establishment and the entire inflexible legal orientation.

Two stories, one theme, and three lessons, Greek, Christian and Jewish. In both stories a great national enterprise and a dream of immortality are at stake. But they carry a heavy price. For Euripides, the enterprise is the Trojan war; the dream is the unity of Greece; he tells us that the price is not worth paying. For Christianity it is the hope of salvation; it teaches that God has paid the price on our behalf. For Judaism it is the future of the Jewish people and their God; it teaches that God does not demand that the price be paid in human blood.

The psychoanalytic theory and practice looks at conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind as expressed through thoughts, feelings, phantasies, and behaviour. In psychoanalysis we try to explore the underlying meaning and gain a deeper understanding of the person's inner world; in the psychoanalytic treatment, we try to bring about psychic change by following the nature of interactions as they develop and try to understand their underlying meanings.

Something that is often quoted in exegetical literature is the saying that the Book of Ruth, 'the high intention of which is to give a king of Israel decent and interesting ancestors, is at the same time … the loveliest little epic and idyllic entity … that has been passed on to us.' This saying is attributed to Goethe, although he was not the first to see it. Since then, the ghost of the idea of a lovely, idyllic little Book of Ruth has haunted scholarly work. Can points be found in the text's content that give rise to this, or are these criteria that are brought in from the outside, caused for example by the gender of the two main persons, Naomi and Ruth, the repeated use of the diminutive form of speech, and the trivialization of what is narrated?

At first glance the Book of Ruth seems to be an unlikely source of much rabbinic interpretation. The story is often seen as a simple tale about country folk, complete with a happy end. That Ruth is a Moabitess who will end up as the ancestress of King David is obviously significant. But what special implications might the rabbis have found in it?

That all happened many years ago. To my surprise, and regret, I am the one still here to tell the story. Ruth was younger than me by so many years, but the hand of God works in its own mysterious way. There are those who still say that her death was my punishment for marrying someone like her, from an enemy people and a godless society. So I feel it is up to me to set the record straight. To tell Ruth's story as she might have told it herself. I will do my best and I hope to do justice to an extraordinary woman., who in a brief moment changed my prejudice and fear into acceptance and love. Who gave me a new life. When Oved comes of age he can learn from her own words the story of his true mother.

I have always seen making ethical people, or at least making people ethical, as an essential part of the task of Jewish education and synagogue life. I have often quoted Leo Baeck who, when he sought to define the essence of Judaism, wrote about ethics. But it is not quite so simple. Is being a good person enough to make you a good Jew, as this congregant ultimately believed? If so, are our institutions and, indeed, Judaism itself, necessary for this to happen?

This book The Water's Edge is about meetings of words and images. The poems included are by contemporary poets: Seamus Heaney; Paul Muldoon; Geoffrey Hill; Jamie McKendrick; Don Paterson; Michael Longley; Stephen Romer; Gabriel Levin; Robin Robertson and Jennie Feldman. Common to all is a sense of water as an element primary in the emotional or intellectual consciousness of the writer. The images are not illustrations to the poems nor are the poems descriptive of the images. They are placed in tandem, sharing a common response to the primacy of the element of water.

David J. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. 235 pp. £35.00/$49.50. ISBN 978-1-904113-25-6

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