Beyond Jewish Theology. Jewish Studies in Heidelberg

Session Submission Type: Lightning Session

Abstract

The Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies (HfJS) was founded in 1979 and has since become a renowned academic center of Jewish Studies in Germany. With its ten chairs thematically ranging from Talmudic Studies, Jewish History, Jewish Pedagogy, Yiddish Literature to Israel Studies and more it covers the field extensively. However, teaching and researching Jewish Studies in the German context comes with its own specific potentials and challenges. This panel will offer an interdisciplinary and transnational outlook on relevant issues, which have shaped and continue to shape research topics, methods, discourses, and even everyday life on campus: How does the situation in Germany differ from the US? Where do experiences in teaching, doing research, and writing Jewish History overlap? And lastly, how does the university, its personnel and its students, interact and self-organize within the broader (increasingly hostile) cultural climate without any presence of prominent US-American community building institutions such as Hillel?

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary Approaches

Chair

• Mirjam Wilhelm, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg

Individual Presentations

• Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Limits of Normalization: Israel Studies in Heidelberg - Johannes Becke

• History of the Jewish People – From Zionist to Jewish Global History - Birgit Klein, Hochschule fuer Juedische Studien Heidelberg (Germany)

• Yiddish Studies and Jewish Literatures at Heidelberg - Roland Gruschka, Hochschule fuer Juedische Studien Heidelberg (Germany)

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 14