Werben im Podcast: Podcast Jüdische Geschichte

In this Interview Prof. Martina Niedhammer and Prof. Marcin Wodzinski discuss the evolution of Hasidism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Prof. Wodzinski explains his approach to researching the topic with methods of Digital Humanities. A special interest of Prof. Niedhammer is the evolving role of woman for the movement of Hasidism.

Zum Sommersemester 2026 übernimmt Dr. Martina Niedhammer die Lehrstuhlvertretung für Prof. Michael Brenner. Zum Semesterstart hat sie uns über ihren Werdegang, die kommenden Lehrveranstaltungen und ihre Ideen für die Zukunft berichtet. Herzlich Willkommen am Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, Martina Niedhammer!

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

International Conference “Jewish Immigration from Eastern Europe to Israel and Germany in the Light of the War in Ukraine (1991-2025). Narratives, Memory and Identity Formation” December 2025 in Munich. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered one of the largest refugee crises in recent European history. Over 1.2 million Ukrainian citizens have received temporary protection in Germany, while a significant number of refugees—Jewish or of Jewish origin—have also sought refuge in Israel and received citizenship under the Law of Return. The experiences of Ukrainian Jews in the wake of the war offer an important lens through which to examine broader patterns of Jewish migration from Eastern Europe over the past four decades. This two-day interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leibnitz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Center for Israel Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, aims to juxtapose two pivotal periods of Jewish migration to Israel and Germany—the post-Soviet 1990s and the post-2022 Ukrainian crisis. By bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of the shifting meanings of Jewish belonging, displacement, and diaspora in the 21st century. Through historical, sociological, and cultural analyses, we aim to build a comparative framework for analyzing Jewish migration in the context of political rupture, memory politics, and transnational identity formation.

Modern scholarship identifies a series of “temporal turns” in Jewish studies stemming from the early 1900s, 1945, and the present notion that “time is running out.” Homo Temporalis: German-Jewish Thinkers on Time follows thinkers who watched catastrophes unfold but imagined a new world rising from their ashes. Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan shaped our understanding of the Humanities by dedicating their thought to temporal concepts such as Living-presence (Erlebnis), Now-time, Natality, and Breath-turn. Their message was a necessary one for those interested in the modern study of religion, critical thinking, political thought, and post-1945 literature. They all shared a deep understanding of time as the most important component of modern life and “ontological egalitarianism.”

Wie können wir ein hebräisches Gebet ins Deutsche übersetzen, wie können wir Spuren der Stimme Gottes hören, und welche Gefahren birgt die Säkularisierung der Heiligen Sprache in Palästina? Dies ist nur ein Teil der Fragen, die der junge Gershom Scholem in den Jahren 1916–1928 zu beantworten versuchte, bevor er sich dem Studium der Kabbala widmete. In seiner kürzlich erschienenen Monografie „Fragen der Sprache in Gershom Scholems Frühen Schriften“ hat Ghilad H. Shenhav – Koordinator des Zentrums für Israel-Studien und wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur der LMU – Scholems frühe Schriften auf ihre Relevanz für aktuelle theologische, politische und genderbezogene Debatten untersucht.

"A New Orient" explores the history of Zionist and Israeli Oriental Studies, focusing on the transfer of knowledge about Islam, Arabic, and the Middle East from German universities to Mandatory Palestine. This migration involved scholars who arrived either as Zionists or refugees from Nazi Germany, joining the Hebrew University. The book traces how the field shifted from a textual-philological approach in Germany to a direct, often tense, encounter with the region's realities, shaped by the growing Jewish-Arab conflict. Drawing on archival sources in multiple languages, it highlights the Orientalists' roles beyond academia, including efforts at Jewish-Arab dialogue and cooperation with diplomatic and security bodies. This study sheds light on the entanglement of scientific research with political, social, and cultural dynamics in 20th-century Palestine and Israel, offering fresh insights into the roots of the Jewish-Arab conflict and the impact of academic knowledge on its development.

The devastating events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war have profoundly shaken Jewish communities worldwide, compelling us to reexamine the concept of Zakhor (remembrance) in our contemporary context. This lecture explores how the ancient commandment to remember takes on new urgency and complexity in light of recent history. Touching on Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's groundbreaking work "Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory," I explore the content and implications of the commandment to remember. From today’s vantage point, I ask: what must we remember? How do we contextualize October 7th within the broader scope of Jewish history? What role does memory play in fostering resilience and shaping our future? Lecture is held in English.

Der Vortrag stellt die Frage nach der jüdischen Moderne. Was heißt es überhaupt, als Jude modern zu sein? Die Frage der Moderne wird mit den Hauptlinien der Tradition assoziiert, mit den Umbrüchen, Krisen, Begriffen, Gedankengängen und Inversionen von Lebensformen des Judentums, vor allem aber mit sie mit den Figurationen der Aufklärung und dem Messianismus zusammengefasst. Als Ansatzpunkt werden wir den Fall Jehuda Halevi besprechen, einen jüdischen-arabischen Denker und Dichter (1074-1141), der in seinem Hauptwerk die Vorzüge der Philosophie und der Tradition diskutierte, und ihre Bedeutung als Lebensformen erwog. In seinen Gedichten wandte er sich einer Messianischen Reise nach Palästina. Damit stellt Halevi ein Vorbild dar, welches aber ein doppeltes Gesicht hat. Es spiegelt sich später im Fall Baruch Spinoza, einem jüdischen Denker der Neuzeit, und Shabbtai Zvi, einer jüdischen messianischen Figur, wider.

„Jiddistik Edition & Forschung“ blickt mit zehn Publikationen auf zwölf reiche Jahre zurück. Die Reihe ist heute weltweit die einzige, in der moderne jiddische Literatur in wissenschaftlichen Editionen veröffentlicht wird. Sie setzt damit die lang unterbrochene Tradition des jiddischen Buchdrucks im deutschen Sprachraum fort. Mit Beiträgen zu Sprache, Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte präsentieren die Sammelbände eine breite Palette jiddistischer Forschung der Gegenwart. Die Anthologien legen facettenreiche Textsammlungen moderner jiddischer Lyrik, Prosa und Essays erstmals in standardisierter Schreibweise vor. Die Reihe zeichnet sich durch drei Publikationssprachen aus: Deutsch, Englisch und Jiddisch; das Jiddische wird konsequent in hebräischer Schrift vorgelegt. Zwei der Herausgeber und Herausgeberinnen stellen in diesem Podcast neue Veröffentlichungen der Reihe vor. Von besonderem Interesse für Studierende und für Freunde des Jiddischen sind eine Anthologie jiddischer Erzählungen, eine Anthologie jiddischer Essays und die Neuedition der herausragenden Grammatik von Elye Falkovitsh. Die deutsche Übersetzung der jiddischen Texten finden Sie hier: https://www.jgk.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/aktuelles/news/der-ganzen-welt-benachbart/welt-benachbart-uebersetzungen.pdf

There is a consensus among the three monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—that the figure of the mother is sacred, perhaps second only to the figure of God Himself. This divine association of the mother makes it challenging, if not impossible, to capture the full depth of motherhood’s meaning. Yet, mothers are also grounded in reality; they belong to the earth and embody it, acting as originators and founders of human society. The first question this lecture poses is: in these dark times, marked by unfolding tragedies within Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli societies, how can we begin to talk about mothers as hybrid beings? Can Arabic and Hebrew—two ancient interlinked Semitic languages—bear the weight of current events without risking their own existence?