Many of the scholars who gathered at the Marxistische Arbeitswoche in 1923, and went on to found the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, were of Jewish background. At first, however, their work was hardly concerned with the social and political issues pertaining to Jews at that time. This changed in emigration. The present essay describes the shift in the Institute's sociological research during its years in New York and its work on anti-Semitism, while focusing on the development of Theodor W. Adorno's work.
If we consider the phenomenological constellation of origins, as described by Bataille and Henry, among others, as an 'excess of life', then the original reference to silence/excess as the pathic basic structure of physical affectivity results in a meta-genealogical reappraisal of purely discursively oriented analyses of origins as a passive basis of experience. Such a demonstration therefore also involves a discussion of Christology as 'incarnation', including a 'co-suffering of God' in the sense of originally excessive self-giving, as was partly conceived in early Christian 'theopaschitism'. This results in an original passibility of body/life as that absolute 'more of life' which is at work in all our living actions as an irrevocable 'I can' or self-affectively revealing 'word of life' in order to test the 'possibility of experience' of appearance in its 'impossibility' itself.
A few years ago, literary critics have defined a new area of research, literary anti-Semitism. These scholars analyze the material, and comment on its political nature and implications. Museum officials have a perhaps more difficult task, as they address a more general audience, and would like to inform as well as educate. Only fairly recently, anti-Semitic objects that were part of private collections made their way into public shows. Curators are still exploring ways to present anti-Semitic texts. This essay discusses the difficulties involved, and offers examples of recent exhibits.
This article deals with the French Hegel-reception by Jean Hyppolite and its conflict with `Orthodox' Marxism.
This article examines how Julian Kulski - the mayor of the largest city in the General Government - acted during the persecution and the murder of the largest urban Jewish community in Europe. Taking into account the ghettoization, anti-Jewish regulations, forced labor, dismissal of Jewish employees, appropriation of property, tax collection and deportations, the article shows that the city administration of the former Polish capital and its mayor were deeply involved in the persecution of Warsaw Jewry and should be included in the history of the Holocaust and German occupation in Poland. Because Kulski came from a family with a Jewish background and helped his wife to hide a few Jews, his administrative collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland and the annihilation of Warsaw Jewry suggest that he was a man of contradictions and that we need a complex approach to research the collaboration of Polish civil servants with the Nazis.
This essay argues that the figure of the dog (Kitmir/Qitmir) in the Seven Sleepers traditi on serves as a test case for poetic and conceptual regimes in early nineteenthDivan and Friedrich Ruckert's Ein Hundlein, das einst Wache that bei Sch & auml;fern ... (published in the Taschenbuch fur Damen, 1822, in the same context that also produced the & Ouml;stliche Rosen) alongside Qur'an 18, Tabari, Ta'labi, Hammer's versified Qur'an and Claudius James Rich in Fundgruben des Orients, as well as Gregory of Tours and Jacob of Serugh, the study shows how Goethe aestheticizes and stabilizes doctrinal tensions, whereas Ruckert elevates the creature within a mediating, barzakh-like framework. The comparison tracks a shift from ornamental adaptation to transformative re-coding and locates key pressure points in seemingly marginal narrative details. The case sheds light on broader patterns in German engagements with Sufi metaphysics between 1800 and 1850.
In this article, the author explores the Jewish poor relief and how it was discussed in relation to the majority society and the immigration of so-called "Ostjuden" within the Jewish congregations in Sweden, focusing on the Jewish community in Gothenburg. The struggle to abolish the poor relief obligation and how this was perceived by authorities and in the press is examined. There were two main sides in the community debates, one side maintained it was a Jewish duty to be charitable and care for impoverished co-religionists, and the other side perceived the Jewish poor relief as an unfair "Jew-tax", and thus a last remaining obstacle to be overcome to achieve full equality with the Christian majority.
In the aftermath of the 1968 student rebellions as well as the rhetoric of the cold war, the accusation against progressive theologians of having a Marxist agenda and therefore betraying the Christian faith was a common pattern. This article introduces Latin American liberation theology and its use of Marxist social analysis as well as story theology and social biography as applied by South Korean Minjung theology as an alternative methodological approach under an anti-communist military dictatorship in a country divided between the two power blocs of the cold war; this is rounded up by a side glimpse on the Chinese case, a country ruled by a communist party with a Christian minority and the recent revisiting of liberation theologies in times of the lasting global economic crisis. Methodologically the author applies aesthetics and hermeneutics to the issues at stake.
The article presented here aims to look at a discourse started by enlightened Jewish doctors in the late i8th century and that was taken up by the Haskalah. It is the collective discourse about the health of the Jews or, in the language of the time, of the "Jewish nation." In the Prussian Haskalah and later in its Galician and Polish iterations, this enlightened, academic medical discourse about specific diseases of the Jewish people and their causes was adopted by maskilim to polemicize against the premodem way of life of traditional, `orthodox' Jews using scientific reasoning. This was especially true in Eastern Europe, where maskilim demanded religious reform and a transformation of their orthodox way of life. Poverty, uncleanliness, lack of physical exercise and employment, a one-sided focus on religious studies as well as early marriage and having too many children were all identified as the causes of illness, weakness and poverty among Jews.
In the following, the author concerns himself with the 2024 book Boschwitz on Wellhausen. The Life, Work, and Letters of aJewish Scholar in Nazi Germany, written by Paul Michael Kurtz.
The epochal turning at the end of the 17th century for Lutheranism of Early Modern Times is an essential process of change. It can be described, too, with characteristic features along the time line before and after 1700. In the discussion about the term ,,Lutheran Orthodoxy" it is problematic, just to eliminate this term and simply to cover for a long period of time the post-Reformation church history with the term ,,Early Modern Times". Certainly the transitions from one spiritual force to the other are fluent. But this doesn't relieve the post-Reformation Protestant church history research from the necessity, to mark clearly the epochal turning around 1700 and to interpret and describe the time before and after in its characteristic features and diffferences with terms long ago introduced.
In the eastern German state of Brandenburg, Jewish (and later) Muslim communities, organizations and networks only began to emerge in the 1990s. Both groups largely arrived as migrants after German reunification. They differ from the largely secular Brandenburg population in their sometimes strong interest in religion and cultural "otherness." This article argues that mainstream media in Brandenburg largely strives to support both groups in their integration in a rather charitable manner, although this does not prevent traditional stereotypes and prejudices from circulating. However, media reports also indicate that society's openness toward Muslim immigrants is less pronounced than towards Jewish immigrants, which could also have a negative impact on potential interreligious cooperation. Since October 7, 2023, contacts between Muslims and Jews, already weak, seem to have become even more reserved.
This article examines the impact of the 2023-2025 Israeli-Palestinian conflict-particularly the aftermath of the October Hamas attack, subsequent war in Gaza, and the international public opinion reactions to those events on Jewish community in Krakow, Poland. While pro-Palestinian protests in Poland were limited compared to those in Western countries, they marked an unprecedented local development, sparking debate within Jewish circles. Using Krakow as a case study, the article explores whether and how these events shifted discourse around Zionism, Israel, and Jewish identity. It employs discourse analysis, supplemented by comparative methodology, the study relies on the data from the semi-structured interviews, and analyses of the official statements and media report as well as the social media discourses. The article addresses two questions: (i) how and why did the Jewish community in Krakow respond to the escalation of the Middle East conflict and the subsequent events, particularly pro-Palestinian activism? (2) do the observed dynamics reflect global trends or local particularities?
This article examines the affective positioning of Israeli Jewish students in Oxford following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, it introduces the concept of "complexity carriers" to describe individuals tasked with holding conflicting emotional and political expectations in polarised academic spaces. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's theory of affective economies and engaging with Judith Butler's work on grievability, the article analyses how grief is recognised, controlled, or rendered illegible depending on the subject's perceived complicity. It investigates who is permitted to grieve, under what conditions, and at what emotional cost. Through the lens of affect, the article reveals how moral legibility and recognition operate unevenly across institutional and interpersonal contexts, and how friendship and silence may emerge as an alternative affective grammar.
The events of October 7, 2023, and their aftermath have intensified social and political tensions across Europe, profoundly impacting both Jewish and Muslim communities. This article explores the phenomenon of dual silencing, where members of these communities face exclusion, misrepresentation, and suppression in public discourse. Jewish voices, often conflated with Israeli state politics, encounter rising antisemitism, while Muslim perspectives are increasingly marginalized amid heightened Islamophobic/anti-Muslim rhetoric. Through an analysis of personal accounts, public testimonies, media narratives, political responses, and societal attitudes, this study examines how both communities experience symbolical erasure and selective amplification depending on shifting political agendas. Using the Czech context as a case study, this article argues that the post-October discourse has deepened existing societal fault lines and significantly influenced how Jewish and Muslim identities are negotiated in the public sphere. The study concludes by considering the implications of this dual silencing for intercommunal relations, and the future of pluralism in Europe.
Hudhaifa Al Mashhadani, a medical doctor and political scientist from Iraq, is leding the German-Arabic language school "Ibn Khaldun" in Berlin-Neukolln. Despite the current escalation in the Middle East conflict, he pursues the vision of close cooperation between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. He also seeks to implement this in the educational sector.
In this article, the understanding of sin of the two Christian theologians Augustine of Hippo and Soren Kierkegaard is discussed with regard to their respective perspectives. To this end, key passages from Augustine's De civitate Dei and Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Deathare used and compared with each other. It will be shown that the perspectives on sin are decisive for the differences that emerge between the two thinkers.
This text is dedicated to the question of Islamic anti-Semitism, which has been the subject of controversy for some time. In order to answer this question, a traditional text, the Hadith of the Stone and the Tree, is interpreted using the method of objective hermeneutics. This hadith is also placed in the context of its origins by analyzing several verses from the Koran. Even if the question of how the Hadith of the Stone and the Tree was received in the history of Islam must remain largely unanswered, it can be seen as clear evidence that there was-not only, but also-a hostile attitude towardsJews in the history ofIslam. The 20th century saw a synthesis of this attitude with elements of modern anti-Semitism, which spread to the Arab world through the propaganda of National Socialist Germany. This synthesis can be found not least in the Hamas Charter.
The article deals with the anti-Semitic facet of the myth of ritual abuse ('Satanic Panic') in German discourse. Based on the f & ijlig;inding that this myth often alludes to Judaism, e.g. through the use of Stars of David or antisemitically charged f & ijlig;igures such as the occult demon Baphomet, the following thesis is put forward: The Satanic Panic is an updated version of the anti-Semitic ritual murder legend and the presence of this legend, which originated in the Middle Ages, in modern Germany is causal for the successful import of this myth from the USA. Another striking feature is the frequent reference to National Socialism, in whose tradition Satanism is placed, which is why the myth also has Holocaust-relativising traits.
This article explores the need of reconceptualizing human dignity in light of the sufffering endured by the thousands of residents of Antakya (formerly Antioch) following the catastrophic earthquakes on February 6, 2023. It examines the impact of the destruction of shared sacred sites on the city's cultural heritage of interreligious relations among its diverse communities. The theoretical and methodological argument posits that human dignity must be understood in relational terms, namely as a dynamic force to reflect on the human capability to shape and adapt to the dynamic relationships between diffferent religious and ethnic communities and to account for the diffferences that derive from the material foundations of their cultural heritage.
