Jewish culture

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Jewish culture denotes a variety of interrelated phenomena; On the one hand the secular culture of the Jewish communities, on the other hand the cultural contribution of certain secular Jews , but also the culture of those religious Jews who are important in the cultural field but are usually not explicitly associated with religion .

Since the beginning of Jewish history , cultural phenomena have developed that have certain characteristic Jewish traits without understanding themselves as specifically religious. Some of these characteristics derive directly from Judaism, others from the diverse relationships between Jews and their environment, and still others from the social and cultural dynamics of the Jewish community in dealing with religion itself.

history

The Jews lived in the diaspora until the 19th century . In Europe these were mainly the Ashkenazim . The Sephardim were widespread among the countries of North Africa, but also in Turkey, as well as in smaller communities in other regions. The Mizrahim were mainly common in the Arab world . There were other Jewish groups in Ethiopia , the Caucasus ( mountain Jews ) or in India . Many of these populations have been ghettoized to some extent by the surrounding cultures .

From the end of the Middle Ages to the Holocaust , the vast majority of the world's Jewish population was of Ashkenazi descent.

Jews in Poland in 1765

The Eastern European Jewish communities of the Middle Ages developed unmistakable cultural characteristics over the centuries, and with the beginning of the Enlightenment (including its Jewish echo, the Haskalah ), the Yiddish- speaking Jews of Eastern Europe saw themselves as the formation of their own ethnic or national group, their identity not necessarily based on religion. Constantin Măciucă calls this “ a distinctive but not isolating Jewish spirit ” that permeates the culture of the Yiddish- speaking Jews. This was only compounded by the rise of Romanticism and the general growth of national consciousness in European countries. So were z. B. the members of the Bund - ( general Jewish workers' union ) from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century - declared not religious or anti-religious. The Haskalah united the Jewish emancipation movement of Central and Western Europe in order to pave the way for Jews to enter secular society. At the same time, pogroms in Eastern Europe caused a wave of emigration, largely to the United States , where between 1880 and 1920 there were 2 million Jewish immigrants. In the 1940s, the Holocaust destroyed most of European Jewry, and the emigration of Jews from Arab and Islamic countries after the creation of Israel caused another geographic shift.

It is difficult to define secular culture among religiously practicing Jews because their entire culture is, as it were, permeated by religious traditions. (This is especially true of Orthodox Judaism .) Gary Tobin , head of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research , said of traditional Jewish culture:

There is no real contradiction between religion and culture. Every religious characteristic appears to be filled with culture; every cultural act with religiosity. The synagogue itself is a center of Jewish culture. After all, what is life really like? Food, relationships, wealth; that is Jewish life. So many of our traditions contain cultural aspects in themselves. See the festival of Passover ( Seder ): it is essentially great theater. If one robs Jewish education and religiosity of culture, it becomes uninteresting.

Yaakov Malkin , professor of aesthetics and rhetoric at Tel Aviv University, founder and academic director of the Meitar College of Judaism as Culture in Jerusalem notes:

Today, numerous secular Jews celebrate Jewish cultural events in a secular way, the Jewish festivals as historical and nature-related festivals, filled with new content and form, or the distinctive events of the circle of life such as birth, bat / bar mitzvah , marriage and death. They come together to study topics of Jewish culture and their relationship to other cultures, in the havurot , cultural associations and secular synagogues, and participate in public and political life similar to the former secular Jewish movements, such as the former Movement for the Freedom of Soviet Jews or the movements against pogroms, discrimination and religious compulsion. The Jewish secular humanistic upbringing shapes general moral values ​​both through classical Jewish and world literature as well as through the pursuit of social change, towards the ideal of justice and charity.

languages

Literary and theater-related expressions of secular Jewish culture can occur both in specifically Jewish languages ​​such as Hebrew , Yiddish or Ladino , as well as in the language of the surrounding cultures such as English , Russian or German . Secular Yiddish literature and the theater saw their rise in the 19th century and their decline in the mid-20th century. The revival of Hebrew beyond its liturgical use is a special phenomenon of the early 20th century that is closely linked to Zionism . In general, the regional situation determines whether a Jewish community uses a Jewish or a non-Jewish language. The language of the Jews in the Polish shtetl and on the Lower East Side of New York (beginning of the 20th century ) was Yiddish, while the assimilated Jews of Germany in the 19th century or currently in the USA today generally speak German or English .

literature

Jewish authors have created distinctive Jewish literature on the one hand, and have contributed to the national literatures of many of the countries in which they live on the other. Although not exclusively secular, the Yiddish works of the authors Scholem Alejchem (whose work amounts to 28 volumes) and Isaac Bashevis Singer ( Nobel Prize 1978) form a separate canon that reflects Jewish life in both Eastern Europe and America. In the USA one counts Jewish authors like Philip Roth , Saul Bellow and others. v. a. one of the greatest American writers who thematize Judaism in many works. Other famous authors who come from Jewish families are the Russian writer Isaak Babel , the Prague artist Franz Kafka , the Munich-born Lion Feuchtwanger and Heinrich Heine, who converted to Protestantism at an early age . For many of these authors (including Heine) the world of experience of Judaism remained a lasting basic motif of their artistic work.

theatre

Movie

At the time when Yiddish theater was still playing an important role in the world of theater, over 100 films were made in Yiddish. Even in the silent film era, the beginnings of Yiddish sound films were made with films such as Ost und West (1923), inspired by dramas and comedies from the Yiddish theater . Many are missing today . The most important films included Shulamith (1931), the first Yiddish film musical, The Yiddish King Lear (1934), the greatest Yiddish film success of all time Yidl mitn Fidl (1936), The Dybbuk (1937), Lang ist der Weg (1948) ) and God, Man and the Devil (1950). One of the most important and productive directors in Yiddish film was Sidney M. Goldin . Other directors of the Yiddish film were Joseph Seiden and Edgar G. Ulmer .

The list of Jewish film entrepreneurs in the English-speaking US film industry is legendary. However, with the exception of Steven Spielberg, few of them expressed a sense or awareness of topics that could be recognized as Jewish. A more specifically Jewish sensibility can be found in films by the Marx Brothers , Mel Brooks or Woody Allens ; other examples of specifically Jewish Hollywood films are Yentl with Barbra Streisand (1983) and John Frankenheimer's Der Fixer (1968).

Jewish film composers have also written the music for numerous important films of the 20th century .

Radio and television

The first broadcasters, RCA and Columbia Broadcasting System , were founded by Jewish Americans David Sarnoff and William S. Paley , respectively . These Jewish pioneers were also among the earliest black and white and color television producers . There was also a Yiddish-language radio among America's Jewish immigrant communities , which had reached its “golden age” from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Although there is only one specifically Jewish television program in the US ( National Jewish Television , with only three hours a week for expressly religious topics), Jews have been part of American television from the start. From Sid Caesar and Milton Berle to Joan Rivers , Gilda Radner and Andy Kaufman to Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld , Jewish stand-up comedians have been icons of American television. Other prominent Jewish radio and television personalities were Eddie Cantor , Al Jolson , Jack Benny , Walter Winchell, and David Susskind . After Paul Johnson were

the Broadway musical, radio and television examples of a fundamental principle of the Jewish diaspora : Jews entering a whole new space start with business and with culture, a tabula rasa on which they put their badges before other interests saw an opportunity to access, found guilds or otherwise seek assistance in order to deny them access.

One of the first televised sitcoms , The Goldbergs , was filmed in a specifically Jewish setting in the Bronx . The overtly Jewish environment of The Goldbergs was unusual for an American television series; one of the few other examples was Brooklyn Bridge (1991–1993). Jews have also played tremendous roles as television comedy writers: Woody Allen , Mel Brooks , Selma Diamond , Larry Gelbart , Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon all wrote for Sid Caesar; Reiner's son Rob Reiner worked with Norman Lear on the series All in the Family (which was often involved in anti-Semitic and other prejudices ); Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld laid the foundations for the success of the sitcom Seinfeld , Lorne Michaels , Al Franken , Rosie Shuster and Alan Zweibel ( Saturday Night Live ) brought a breath of fresh air to the Variety Show of the 1970s.

music

dance

Rooted in biblical traditions, the Jews have long considered dance to be an expression of joy and a sense of community. "The dance was a favorite pastime of the Jews, who were never ascetic , and had its place in religion." In antiquity, as in all ancient cultures, dance was deeply embedded in the religion and everyday life of Israelites and Jews. Each diaspora community developed its own dance traditions for weddings and other significant events. For the Ashkenazim in Eastern Europe were z. B. dances, the names of which corresponded to the different forms of klezmer music , the connecting link at the wedding ceremony in the shtetl . Jewish dances were influenced both by the surrounding non-Jewish traditions and by the Jewish sources that survived over time. “ In general, the Jews used expressive body language that clearly differed from that of neighboring non-Jewish peoples, mainly through the language of the hands and arms, as well as the legs - in the case of more skilled younger men. “In general, in traditional religious communities, dance with partners of the opposite sex tended to be viewed with suspicion.

The folk dance in Israel was only developed with the immigrants of the 20th century, it “ reflects the life of the people returning to their country. “In the beginning, Jews from Germany and Austria were the main leaders, such as Gertrud Kaufmann alias Gurit Kadman or Rivka Sturman , both from Leipzig. The origins of the first “Israeli” folk dances can be traced back to around 1940, at that time still called “Palestinian folk dance” in literature, but no later than 1944 with the first folk dance festival in Kibbutz Dalia. Hora is the name of a round dance in Israel and other countries. (The same name refers to a round dance, which is the national dance in Romania .) In Yemen , where Jews were forbidden to dance in public, forms of dance developed that consisted of hopping on the spot and certain postures so that they could be performed in a tighter space were.

Jews have made important and decisive contributions to the development of ballet and modern dance in Europe, in the United States and in Israel, as they did in the dance of musical theater. In Russia and France, the Ballets Russes, according to Paul Johnson , were "primarily a Jewish creation". In Israel, both the Jewish immigrants from France and other European countries, as well as the native Jews, have established a vibrant dance scene, including the popular and influential Israel Ballet. This ensemble consists of both native Israelis and emigrants from the former Soviet Union . Contemporary dance in Israel derives from both Israeli folk dance and European influences and is cultivated in the popular Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Inbal Dance Theater, Bat-Dor Dance Company and Batsheva Dance Company. In the United States, Jerome Robbins , Anna Sokolow , Michael Bennett , Michael Kidd , Ron Field , Arthur Murray , Helen Tamiri and Pearl Lang successful and a leader in the Broadway dance, ballet and contemporary dance, and to some degree in ballroom dancing was. The Jewish ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein was the founder and co-founder of the School of American Ballet , the American Ballet and the New York City Ballet .

Visual arts

Compared to music or theater, the visual arts show less of a specific Jewish tradition. This is mostly justified with the fact that the Jewish culture before emancipation was dominated by religious tradition. Since most rabbinical authorities believed that the Second Commandment would disqualify works of fine art as “carved pictures”, the number of Jewish artists remained relatively small until they largely assimilated Europeans at the end of the 18th century. It should be noted that despite the shyness of the earlier religious communities that art was idolatry, the Tanach noted sacred art that was practiced in ancient Jewish times and in the Middle Ages . The Holy of Holies and the two temples in Jerusalem are the first known examples of "Jewish art". During the first centuries after Christianity, Jewish religious art spread to the surrounding Mediterranean regions such as Syria and Greece , with frescoes on synagogue walls as well as the Jewish catacombs in Rome . The medieval rabbinic and kabbalistic literature included calligraphic as graphic art illustrations. However, this artistic activity was forbidden to the Jews of the European ghetto . Johnson, in turn, sums up this sudden shift in Jewish participation in the visual arts (like many other arts) to a major entry for them into this branch of European cultural life:

Again, the arrival of a Jewish artist was considered a strange phenomenon. Indeed, for centuries there were numerous animals in Jewish art (though few people): lions on the Torah hangings , owls on Judean coins, animals on the capitals of Capernaum , birds at the 5th century fountain of the Naro Synagogue ( Tunis ) ; Carved animals were also found in wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe - in fact, the Jewish wooden knife was the prototype of the modern Jewish woodcut tool . A book of Yiddish folk ornamentation , printed in Vitebsk in 1920 , was very similar to Chagall's bestiary . But the resistance of pious Jews to portraying something living was still very strong at the beginning of the 20th century.

As a result, Jewish secular art developed - just like Jewish music - not oriented towards European classical music immediately after emancipation , but only with the rise of modernism in the 20th century. There were indeed numerous Jewish artists in the 19th century , such as Moritz Daniel Oppenheim , but Jewish artistic creativity mainly developed towards the end of the First World War . According to Nadine Nieszawer, “ Jews were always thrust into their books until 1905, but it was only after the Russian Revolution that they emancipated and became involved in politics and became artists. A Jewish cultural rebirth ”. Certain Jews were significantly involved in modern European art movements such as Art Deco ( Tamara de Lempicka ), Bauhaus ( Mordecai Ardon , László Moholy-Nagy ), Constructivism ( Boris Aronson , El Lissitzky ), Cubism ( Nathan Altman , Jacques Lipchitz , Louis Marcoussis , Max Weber , Ossip Zadkine ), Expressionism ( Erich Kahn , Jack Levine , Ludwig Meidner , Jules Pascin , Chaim Soutine ), Impressionism ( Max Liebermann , Leonid Pasternak , Camille Pissarro ), Minimalism ( Richard Serra ), Orphism ( Sonia Delaunay ), Realism ( Raphael Soyer ), social realism ( Leon Bibel , Raphael Soyer), surrealism ( Victor Brauner , Treber Chagall , Meret Oppenheim and Man Ray ), Vienna School of Fantastic Realism ( Arik Brauer , Ernst Fuchs ) and Vorticism ( David Bomberg , Jacob Epstein ), as well as some not necessarily connected to a single movement ( Balthus , Eduard Bendemann , Mark Gertler , Maurycy Gottlieb , Nahum Gutm an , Menashe Kadishman , Moise Kisling , RB Kitaj , Mane Katz , Isidor Kaufman , Michel Kikoïne , Pinchus Kremegne , Amedeo Modigliani , Elie Nadelman , Felix Nussbaum , Reuven Rubin , Charlotte Salomon , Boris Schatz , George Segal , Anna Ticho , William Rothenstein ) - Lucian Freud , Frank Auerbach , pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Judy Chicago achieved particular fame in the USA and Great Britain after the Second World War .

Famous Jews in the Montparnasse movement at the beginning of the 20th century and the abstract expressionists after World War II were: Helen Frankenthaler , Adolph Gottlieb , Philip Guston , Al Held , Franz Kline , Schütze Krasner , Barnett Newman , Milton Resnick and Mark Rothko , as well as the Postmodernists . Many Russian Jews were into the art of scenic design , the aforementioned Chagall and Aronson, as well as the well-known revolutionary Léon Bakst , who like the other two also painted. Mexican-Jewish artists like Pedro Friedeberg . Gustav Klimt was not a Jew, but almost all of his patrons. Among great artists, Chagall can be seen as the most deeply indebted to Judaism. But as this art fades into graphic design , other Jewish names and themes become more important: Leonard Baskin , Al Hirschfeld , Ben Shahn , Art Spiegelman, and Saul Steinberg . And in the golden age of American comics, the Jewish role remains inestimable: Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel , the creators of Superman were Jewish, like Bob Kane ( né Robert Cohen), Martin Goodman , Joe Simon , Jack Kirby and Stan Lee from Marvel Comics ; as well as William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman , founders of MAD magazine .

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ The emergence of a Jewish cultural identity  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , undated (2002 or later) in MyJewishLearning.com, reprinted by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Aug 11, 2006.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.myjewishlearning.com  
  2. ↑ Malkin, Y. "Humanistic and secular Judaisms." Modern Judaism An Oxford Guide , p. 107.
  3. ^ Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Heinrich Heine als theologe , 1981
  4. ↑ Johnson, Op. cit. P. 462-463.
  5. ↑ Johnson, the Op. cit. P. 462-463.
  6. ↑ Landa, MJ (1926). The Jew in Drama , p. 17. New York: Ktav Verlag (1969).
  7. ↑ Schwarz, Georg: Kulturexperimente im Altertum . Berlin 2010.
  8. ^ Yiddish, Klezmer, Ashkenazic or 'shtetl' dances , Le Site Genevois de la Musique Klezmer. Accessed Feb 12, 2006.
  9. ↑ Lisa Katz Israeli Dance: History of Israeli Dance . Part of Judaism. About.com. Erg. Feb 12, 2006.
  10. ↑ Johnson, Op. cit. , P. 410.
  11. ↑ Ismar Schorsch, Shabbat Shekalim Va-Yakhel 5755 , commentary on Exodus 35: 1--38:20. February 25, 1995. Accessed Feb 12, 2006.
  12. ↑ Velvel Pasternak, Music and Art , part of "12 Paths" on Judaism.com. Accessed Feb 12, 2006.
  13. ↑ Jessica Spitalnic Brockman, a brief history of Jewish art  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on MyjüdischLearning.com. Erg. Feb 12, 2006.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.myjewishlearning.com  
  14. ↑ Michael Schirber, Jewish Catacombs , MSNBC, July 20, 2005. Erg. Feb 12, 2006.
  15. ^ Jona Lendering, the Jewish Diaspora: Rome . Livius.org. Erg. Feb 12, 2006.
  16. ^ Roza Bieliauskiene and Felix Tarm, Brief History of Jewish Art , Jewish Art Network. Archived Oct. 23, 2004.
  17. ↑ Johnson, op. Cit stark. , P. 411 .
  18. ↑ Rebecca Assoun, Jewish artist in Montparnasse ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . European Jewish Press, July 19, 2005. Erg. Feb 12, 2006. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ejpress.org
  19. ↑ a b c d e f g With the exception of those living in isolated Jewish communities, most Jews listed here as contributing to secular Jewish culture also participated in the cultures of the peoples they lived with and nations they lived in. In most cases, However, the work and lives of these people did not exist in two distinct cultural spheres but rather in one that incorporated elements of both. This person had one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent, and therefore exemplified this phenomenon par excellence .
  20. ^ Jewish artists , Jewish virtual library

literature

Monographs
  • Bernhard Blumenhagen: Jews and Judaism in medieval art . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1965.
  • John Cooper: Eat and be satisfied. A social history of Jewish food . Aronson Books, Northvale, NJ 1993, ISBN 0-87668-316-2 .
  • Daniel Hoffmann, Ed .: Handbook on German-Jewish Literature of the 20th Century . Paderborn 2002. Digitized
  • Nicoline Hortzitz: The "Jewish doctor". Historical and linguistic studies on the discrimination of a profession in the early modern period (language, literature and history; vol. 7). Winter, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-8253-0131-1 .
  • Michèle Klein: A time to be born. Customs and folklore of Jewish birth . Jewish Publication Soc., Philadelphia / PA 1998, ISBN 0-8276-0608-7 .
  • Hannelore Künzl: Jewish Art. From biblical times to the present . Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-36799-2 .
  • Peter Ortag: Jewish culture and history (series of publications; vol. 436). Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-89331-501-2 ( online as PDF , very good overview)
  • Elfi Pracht-Jörns : Jewish cultural heritage in North Rhine-Westphalia . Bachem, Cologne 1997-2005
    • Bd. 1 Cologne district . 1997, ISBN 3-7616-1322-9 (contributions to architectural and art monuments in the Rhineland; Vol. 34)
    • Bd. 2 Düsseldorf district . 2000, ISBN 3-7616-1444-6 (Contributions to architectural and art monuments in the Rhineland; Vol. 34)
    • Bd. 3 Detmold administrative district . 1998, ISBN 3-7616-1397-0 (Articles on the architectural and art monuments of Westphalia; Vol. 1)
    • Bd. 4 Münster administrative district . 2002, ISBN 3-7616-1397-0 (Contributions to the architectural and art monuments of Westphalia; Vol. 1)
    • Bd. 5 Arnsberg administrative region . 2005, ISBN 3-7616-1449-7 (Contributions to the architectural and art monuments of Westphalia; Vol. 1)
  • B. Cecil Roth (ed.): The art of the Jews . Ner-Tamid-Verlag, Frankfurt / M., ISBN 3-201-01204-1 (reprint of the Frankfurt / M. 1963/64 edition)
    • Vol. 1 main volume . 1981,
    • Vol. 2 Supplement . 1982
  • Alfred Rubens: A Jewish iconography . Nonpareil Books, London 1981 (reprinted London 1954 edition)
  • Ursula Schubert, Kurt Schubert: Jewish book art (book art through the ages; vol. 3). ADEVA, Graz 1983-1993
  • Hans-Peter Schwarz (ed.): The architecture of the synagogue. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-608-76272-8 .
  • Harald von Sprockhoff: The Jewish part in the cultural history of mankind ; partly online at google books
  • Claus Stephani: Jewish shepherd stories from the Wischauer Land (Eastern Marmatia) . Edition Carpathians: Ravensburg, 1983.
  • Claus Stephani: Was a ruler, carter ... life and suffering of the Jews in Oberwischau. Reminder conversations. Athenaeum Published by Frankfurt / M., 1991.
  • Claus Stephani: Witnesses from everyday life in Eastern Jews. Household goods and handicrafts on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains. Documentation in writing, objects and images. Booklet accompanying the exhibition Everyday Telling in Eastern Judaism at the Institute for German Studies, Karl-Franzens-University, Graz, 1996.
  • Claus Stephani: Ostjüdische Märchen (series: The fairy tales of world literature). Eugen Diederichs Published by München, 1998.
  • Claus Stephani: Fiabe e leggende ebraiche. Traduzione di Eleonora Marcello. Newton & Compton Editori: Roma, 2001 (translation into Italian of “East Jewish Fairy Tales” ).
  • Claus Stephani: Basme evreieşti. Culese pe meleagurile Carpaților. Traducere din limba germană de Ruxandra G. Hosu. Editura Hasefer: Bucureşti, 2004 (translation into Romanian of the “East Jewish fairy tales” ).
  • Claus Stephani: The image of the Jew in modern painting. An introduction. / Imaginea evreului în pictura modernă. Introductiv study. Traducere in limba romana de Ion Peleanu. (Bilingual edition.) Editura Hasefer: București, 2005.
  • Claus Stephani: A fost un ștetl în Carpați. Convorbiri despre viața evreilor din Vişeu. Traducere din limba germană de Ruxandra G. Hosu. Editura Hasefer: Bucureşti, 2005 (translation into Romanian of the volume “Was one Hersch, Fuhrmann…” ).
  • Claus Stephani: Fiabe e leggende ebraiche. Traduzione di Eleonora Marcello. Edizione Mondolibri: Milano, 2006 (translation into Italian of the “East Jewish Fairy Tales” ).
  • Claus Stephani: From the brave Aaron. Jewish stories from the Carpathian Mountains. / Aaron cel curajos. Povestiri popular evreieşti din zona Carpaților. Traducere din limba germană de Ruxandra G. Hosu (Bilingual edition). Editura Hasefer: București, 2008.
  • Claus Stephani: "Green Mother Bukowina". German-Jewish writers from Bukovina. Documentation in manuscripts, books and pictures. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name from April 22 to June 25, 2010. Munich, 2010.
  • Anette Weber u. a. (Ed.): Mappot ... blessed to come. The band of Jewish tradition / Mappot… blessed be who comes. The band of Jewish tradition . Secolo-Verlag, Osnabrück 1997, ISBN 3-929979-38-1 (exhibition catalog, texts in German and English)
  • Werner Weinberg (author), Walter Röll (ed.): Lexicon on the religious vocabulary and customs of the German Jews . Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-7728-1621-5 .
Essays
  • Christoph Daxelmüller: wedding carriages and romances. On Jewish Assimilation in the Early Modern Age . In: Bayrisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde , 1996, pp. 107–120
  • Christoph Daxelmüller: Screeching and knocking hammers. Jewish customs in Franconia . In: Frankenland , Vol. 40 (1988), pp. 281-290.
  • Christoph Daxelmüller: Hundred years of Jewish folklore. Dr. Max (Meir) Grunwald and the "Society for Jewish Folklore" . In: Ashkenaz. Journal for the History and Culture of the Jews 9, 1999, pp. 133-143
  • Christoph Daxelmüller: Jewish popular culture in the research perspective of European ethnology . In: Ethnologia Europaea 16/2, 1986, pp. 97-116
  • Elliot Horowitz: Jewish Youth in Europe. 1300-1800 . In: Giovanni Levi, Jean-Claude Schmitt (Hrsg.): Geschichte der Jugend , Vol. 1: From antiquity to absolutism, Frankfurt / M. 1996, pp. 113-165
  • Hannelore Künzl: Jewish art between the Middle Ages and the modern age. The 16th to 18th centuries . In: Michael Graetz (Ed.): Creative moments of European Judaism in the early modern period . Winter, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8253-1053-1 , pp. 75-96
  • Franz Landsberger The Jewish artist before the time of emancipation . In: Hebrew Union College Annual 16, 1941, pp. 321-414
  • Robert Liberles: On the Threshold of Modernity. 1618-1780 . In: Marion Kaplan (ed.): History of everyday Jewish life in Germany. From the 17th century to 1945 . Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50205-9 , pp. 19-122
  • Ursula Schubert: Assimilation tendencies in Jewish visual art from the 3rd to the 18th century . In: Kairos , NT 30/31, 1988/89, pp. 162-187
  • Claus Stephani: On the Jewish handicraft in Bukowina. Notes on the edge of a statistic. In: Andrei Corbea; Michael Astner (ed.): Bucovina Cultural Landscape. Studies on the German-language literature of the Buchenland after 1918. / Contribuţii Ieşene de Germanistică. Jassyer contributions to German studies. Editura Universităţii "Alexandru Ioan Cuza": Iaşi, 1990. Vol. 5, pp. 237-242.
  • Claus Stephani: The world we know little about. A few remarks on Josef Burg. In: Anton Schwob (ed.): The German literary history of East Central and Southeast Europe from the middle of the 19th century until today. Research priorities and deficits. Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk: Munich, 1992. pp. 137–141.
  • Claus Stephani: pillars of modern art. From Max Liebermann to Dara Birnbaum / Marginalien at a time of diversity and big names. In: David, Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 19th vol., No. 74, Sept. 2007, pp. 80–83. ( [1]
  • Claus Stephani: return to tradition. Aspects of the change of identity and way of life in Romanian Judaism after the fall of the Wall in 1990. In: Klaus Roth (ed.): Festivals, celebrations, rituals in Eastern Europe. Studies on socialist and post-socialist festival culture. Freiburg Social Anthropological Studies, ed. by Christian Giordano, University of Friborg, Switzerland. Vol. 21. LIT Verlag: Zürich, Berlin, 2008. pp. 331–341.
  • Claus Stephani: patriot and global citizen at the same time. On the occasion of the 70th birthday of the Austrian writer Joseph Roth. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 21st vol., No. 81, June 2009, pp. 22–24. ( [2]
  • Claus Stephani: "Take my song." To the documentary show of German-Jewish poets from Bukovina. In: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift (Vienna), 23/88, Apr. 2011, pp. 28–31. ( [3]
  • Awigdor V. Unna: From the customs of the Ashkenazi Jews (miminhagei jehudei ashkenas) . In: Udim 7/8, 1977-1978, pp. 195-212; 9/10, 1979-1980, pp. 159-176; 11/12, 1981-1982, pp. 245-255
reference books
  • Encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture, complete works in 7 volumes including register volume, edited by Dan Diner on behalf of the Saxon Academy of Sciences www.saw-leipzig.de

Web links