Participants

Dr. lrene Aue Ben-David, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem
Katharina Bawidamann, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Dr. Verena Buser, Western Galilee College
Laura Cazes, Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland e. V.
Katarzyna Czerwonog6ra, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Bar-llan University
Dr. Sigal Davidi, Tel-Aviv University
Sabena Donath, Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland
Prof. Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, Indiana University
Prof. Abigail Gillman, Boston University
Prof. Yemima Hadad, Leipzig University
Dr. Laura lngianni Altmann, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg
Dr. Naama Jager, Bar-llan University
Dr. Elisabeth Janik-Freis, Technical University Berlin
Prof. Marion Kaplan, New York University
Dr. Thekla Keuck, University of Bremen
Prof. Dr. Doron Kiesel, Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland
Rabbi Prof. Dr. Elisa Klapheck, Universität Paderborn
Prof:in Dr. Bettina Kleiner, Cornelia Goethe Zentrum, Universität Frankfurt
PD Dr. Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Moses Mendelssohn Center, University of Potsdam
Cornelia Maimon Levi, Jüdischer Frauenbund eV.
Dr. Judith Müller, Goethe University Frankfurt
Dr. Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Independent scholar
PD Dr. Tamara Or, Stiftung Deutsch-Israelisches Zukunftsforum
Prof. Dr. Miriam Rürup, Moses Mendelssohn Center, University of Potsdam/Wissenschaftliche
Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts
Kathrin Schwarz, University of Basel
Dr. Björn Siegel, Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg
Dr. Veronique Sina, Goethe University Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Sabine Toppe, Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin
Hanna Veiler, Jewish Student Union in Germany
Prof. Dr. Rebekka Voß, Goethe University Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Mirjam Wenzel, Jewish Museum Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Christian Wiese, Martin Buber Chair, Goethe University Frankfurt
Dr. Sarah Wobick-Segev, University of Hamburg
Dr. Kirn Wünschmann, Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg

Dear colleague,

We are happy to announce the international Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme 2023/2024 (German academic year October 2023-September 2024). We invite applications from PhD students who carry out research related to the history and culture of the German-speaking Jewry. The programme is jointly organised by the Leo Baeck Institute London and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Our programme is open to PhD candidates worldwide. The deadline for application is February 1st, 2023.

Fellows receive a stipend of 1,350 € a month. In addition, a monthly research allowance of 100 € is available. Fellows can also apply for supplements for health insurance (max 100 €/month) and childcare, as well as travel allowances to support research tips and participation at conferences abroad. Contributions to tuition fees outside Germany may also be granted (max. 10,000 €) and monthly supplements outside Germany.

Please feel free to circulate the announcement among colleagues and students who might be interested in the fellowship programme. Our advertisement is also available on the website of the Studienstiftung (https://www.studienstiftung.de/en/leo-baeck/) and on the website of the Leo Baeck Institute London (http://www.leobaeck.co.uk/leo-baeck-fellowship-programme).

You will find a German version of the announcement here: https://www.studienstiftung.de/leo-baeck/ .

The application form is at: https://www.studienstiftung.de/pool/sdv/public/documents/STIPENDIUM/Leo_Baeck/LeoBaeck_Application_Form_2023.docx

Yours sincerely,

Prof David Rechter

Chairman
Leo Baeck Institute London
2nd Floor, Arts Two Building
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7882 5690

info@leobaeck.co.uk

c.chitayat@leobaeck.co.uk

www.leobaeck.co.uk

Dr Peter Antes

Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme

Ahrstrasse 41, D-53175 Bonn

Germany

Ph +49 228 82096-286

Fax +49 228 82096-259

antes@studienstiftung.de

leobaeck@studienstiftung.de

www.studienstiftung.de

Call for Papers

Seventh Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History

“Diaspora and Debris.

Material Culture in German-Jewish History”

Washington D.C., April, 25-28, 2023

Conveners: Co-organized by Anna-Carolin Augustin (German Historical Institute Washington DC), Mark Roseman (Indiana University Bloomington), and Miriam Rürup (Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam), with additional support from the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts

Deadline: December 15, 2022

We invite proposals for papers to be presented at the Seventh Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History to take place at the Institute of the German Historical Institute (GHI), Washington DC in April 2023. We seek proposals specifically from postdoctoral scholars, recent PhDs as well as those in the final stages of their dissertations.

The aim of the conference is to bring together a small transatlantic group of junior scholars to explore new research and questions in Jewish history. Over two days the participants will give short presentations on their individual research projects and engage in discussions on sources, methodology, and theory in order to assess current and future trends in the modern history of Jews in Europe, the Americas, and beyond.

By looking at objects of German-Jewish diasporas, the conference will focus on the intersection between material culture and Jewish history. For some years now, the cultural studies driven ‘material turn’ has encouraged the use of artifacts – objects, libraries, archives, etc. – as historical sources. For its part, Jewish history has increasingly turned to topics and methods related to material culture, especially in the context of Jewish migration/transit, exile, global diasporas, and Holocaust studies. Jewish childhood studies and women’s history incorporate the analysis of material objects as do studies on Jewish consumer cultures. For the German-Jewish diasporas, there is the additional crucial question of the fate of European Jewish material culture after the Holocaust. Ongoing public debates on the looting of artifacts in different historical contexts as well as their restitution (or repatriation) emphasize the connection between restitution and historical memory and reinforce the need for, and benefit of, so-called ‘object biographies’. For historians of German-Jewry, Jewish museums, archives and collections as material repositories of knowledge have proven increasingly important scholarly resources. Provenance-research projects as well as the digitization of objects – meaning online object databases that make thousands of items in storage accessible to the public – exemplify and support such scholarship.

We would like to explore the benefits (and challenges) of intertwining material culture and Jewish history as it relates to German-Jewish diasporas. Based on case studies that combine Jewish history with a material-culture approach in a very broad sense, we want to identify key approaches and topics of the field. Areas of specific focus could include but are not limited to:

– Methods: How to write Jewish History using artifacts:  Lessons learned from Jewish “objects of (German-Jewish) diaspora”. Do objects tell us different stories?

– The question of contested heritage: How to deal with (German-)Jewish material heritage?

– Jewish history and provenance research: What is the relationship between the two disciplines? Looting, translocating, and restituting Jewish artifacts in Jewish History

– Exile Studies and traveling things: The migration of objects and “Dinge des Exils” (Schloer/Bischoff) instances of transfer, movement or dislocation of cultural property in the course of war, robbery, migration, trade and political upheaval

– Exhibiting Jewish History and objects’ stories: Museum studies, history and memory, identity and art

The workshop language will be English. The organizers will cover basic expenses for travel and accommodation.

Please send short proposals (750 words max.) and a one-page CV to Susanne Fabricius (fabricius@ghi-dc.org) by December 15. Successful applicants will be notified by the end of the year.

The Hochschule. Material History and Intellectual Legacy.

International Conference November 29–30, 2022
Centrum Judaicum Berlin/digital
In Cooperation with the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem

The Hochschule. Material History and Intellectual Legacy.Held at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin on November 29–30 2022, this international conference by the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem and Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow marks the 150th anniversary of the »Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums,« as well as 80 years since its closure by the Nazi regime.
Established in 1872 against the background of the permanent exclusion of Jewish Studies and rabbinical training from German universities, the »Hochschule« became one of the leading Jewish academic institutions in Germany – a spiritual home for prominent Jewish scholars such as Leo Baeck, Hermann Cohen, Ismar Elbogen, Max Wiener, Emil Fackenheim, Abraham Geiger, Julius Guttmann, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Solomon Schechter, and Eugen Täubler. Over its seven-decade lifetime, the »Hochschule« developed a unique tradition of learning that promoted a broad and liberal understanding of Jewish culture and thought. Although it managed to carry on its work even after November 1938, when most German-Jewish institutions had been dissolved, the »Hochschule« closed for good in 1942, and the majority of its scholars and students perished in the Holocaust. However, the »Hochschule’s« legacy was kept alive against all odds: Some of its members managed to flee Germany and continued their intellectual work in new homelands. This legacy is also preserved in the »Hochschule’s« library, whose remnants survived the war and were disseminated across numerous countries.

This conference brings together scholars dealing with the intellectual legacy of the »Hochschule« as well as with the material aspects of the institution’s historical development. To add a fresh perspective to the question of German-Jewish cultural heritage and its development in the 20th century, we want to focus especially on the post-Holocaust »Hochschule« to understand what its remains may teach us about the »Wissenschaft des Judentums,« Jewish scholarship and culture more broadly.

Flyer_TheHochschule

Das Postdoc-Netzwerk der WAG besteht seit 2017. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Vernetzung, die sowohl einen strategischen, als auch fachlichen Austausch bieten soll.

Die strategische Vernetzung erfolgt über einer Verteiler, bzw. eine Mailingliste und ein eigens hierfür eingerichtetes passwortgeschütztes WIKI zur internen Kommunikation. Der fachliche Austausch findet derzeit vor allem in den auf dem zweiten Treffen gegründeten AGs statt, die mittlerweile auf eine sehr aktive Zeit zurückblicken können. Jedes Jahr findet am Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg eine Jahresversammlung statt.

Zu den Aktivitäten des Netzwerks werden in diesem Bericht jene Veranstaltungen und Veröffentlichungen gezählt, die von einem Mitglied des Netzwerks im Rahmen der WAG und/oder teilweise mit finanzieller Unterstützung durch die WAG stattfanden.

WAG Postdoc-Netzwerk_Tätigkeiten 201920202021

5th Conference of the Displaced Persons Research Network
October 28-30, 2021

Vom 28.-30. Oktober findet eine Konferenz mit Unterstützung der WAG statt, die unser Mitglied und Alfred Landecker Lecturer Dr. Sebastian Musch mitorganisiert. Die Teilnahme ist vor Ort in Osnabrück oder via Livestream möglich. Mehr Informationen dazu hier:

Conference Webpage:
https://www.nghm.uni-osnabrueck.de/negotiating_migration/conference_2021.html

Teilnahme via Livestream:
https://webconf.uni-osnabrueck.de/b/hen-idf-joc-rmj

Programm-Plakat (3)

Jerusalem_Call For Interest

Environmental history or the study of human interactions with nature over time, has emerged as a subdiscipline during the 1980s and has ever since engaged with various other theoretical frameworks and historical subelds.
Throughout the last decades environmental historians have investigated the manifestation of human perceptions and practices concerning the natural environment in relation to political, social, gender, religious, and economic aspects. Unfortunately, Jewish history has not yet gained sucient attention within this context.
The historiography of European Jews, which in recent decades accepted the spatial turn in the humanities, has so far mainly dealt with aspects of Jewish urban life, albeit without specically considering environmental aspects of city dwelling. In addition, the Jewish relationship to nature was so far mainly addressed in relation to Zionist youth movements and the work of the Hachsharot (agricultural training) in Europe. Moreover, studies of Zionism have already analysed images and practices related to nature and landscape in Europe as well as in Israel/Palestine.
Nevertheless, they have not yet systematically engaged with the critical/ theoretical literature in environmental history and its key subjects.
In our research group, we intend to dene the role of Jewish and Zionist history within environmental history and examine in what ways it is dierent and/or similar to other case studies. By doing so we also intend to stress the transnational, global and comparative aspects in Jewish history. In addition, alongside cultural environmental aspects we wish to also emphasise some of the material aspects in Jewish environmental history while examining attitudes and approaches to specic natural elements such as air, climate, water, soil, flora and fauna.

The research group will hold monthly online meetings, starting in October 2021, to discuss recent work in (German) Jewish Environmental history as well as work in progress by participants. We invite scholars who are interested in environmental history, history of science, intellectual history, cultural and social history as well as Jewish history more generally (from antiquity to modernity) to participate in the research group. Due to the focus of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem on German Jewish history the research group will be inclined to encourage scholarly work related to this geographical and cultural arena. However it will not exclude applications which focus on other geographies and other cultural contexts.

Please send a short project or interest description (not more than 500 words) and a CV, including academic affiliation and contact details to leobaeck@leobaeck.org before the 15th of June 2021.
For any questions on the research group please get in touch directly with the heads of the group,
Dr Netta Cohen (netta.cohen@history.ox.ac.uk)
or Dr Dominik Hünniger (dominik.huenniger@uni-hamburg.de).