Dan Diner

At the end of the First World War, Jewish national councils emerged in nearly every successor state to the multinational empires of East-Central and Eastern Europe. In the wake of war, revolution, and the formation of new nation-states, as well as unprecedented waves of anti-Jewish violence, they sought acceptance as representatives of the Jewish population. The councils fought for equal rights, Jewish autonomy, and the recognition of the Jews as a nation. Additionally, they worked to curtail anti-Jewish violence, organized relief for victims of war and pogroms, and supported Jewish refugees. Furthermore, the councils formed a transnational network in order to present the demands of Eastern European Jewry at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 with one voice. By presenting original documents on the Jewish national councils throughout East-Central and Eastern Europe for the first time, this edited volume opens up new perspectives on the history of the Jews at the end of the First World War, the history of Zionism, and the history of East-Central and Eastern Europe.

Markus Brann (1849–1920), der von 1891 bis zu seinem Tod das Jüdisch-Theologische Seminar in Breslau leitete, zählt zu den zentralen Akteuren der Wissenschaft des Judentums im deutschsprachigen Raum. Als Vertreter eines konservativen Judentums und einer positiv-historischen Geschichtsauffassung in der Nachfolge Zacharias Frankels machte Brann sich vor allem als langjähriger Herausgeber der Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums sowie als Initiator und Mitglied zahlreicher jüdischer wissenschaftlicher Vereine und Zirkel verdient. Die hier erstmals publizierte Auswahl aus seiner umfangreichen Gelehrtenkorrespondenz bietet einen Überblick über Diskurse, Netzwerke und Projekte der Wissenschaft des Judentums. Die Briefe spiegeln auch innerjüdische Positionierungen und die Auseinandersetzung mit der nichtjüdischen Umwelt, insbesondere mit der protestantischen Theologie, wider.

In this essay, German-Israeli historian Dan Diner argues that the European consciousness uses America as a metaphor for the dark sides of modernism. He finds an especially aggressive variant of this negative judgement in Germany, the roots of which he traces back to the Romantic period.

Lost in the Sacred poses questions about the Muslim world that no other book by a Western writer has dared to ask. Focusing on the Arab Middle East, Dan Diner asks what caused the Muslim world to lag behind so dramatically. Is Western dominance to blame? Or is the problem even with Islam itself? These questions, however unsettling, need to be asked--and they are being posed all across the Muslim world today. This book provides cautious answers that are no less disturbing than the questions. Diner argues that Islam's cultural stasis is not due to the Muslim faith itself, but to the nature of the sacred it is infused with and that penetrates every aspect of life--spiritual and material. He reveals how the sacred in Islam suspends the acceleration of social time, hinders change, and circumvents secularization and modernity. Diner takes readers on an unforgettable intellectual journey, from today's global conflicts back into the distant past. He describes the Muslim encounter with the emerging West in early modernity, the challenges Western imperial expansion posed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the time-suspending impact of Arabic as a sacred language, the prevention of print, the classical age of Islam with its dazzling heights of learning and culture--and much more. Diner traces an entangled perspective, combining the spiritual with the social, and the cultural with the political. Throughout, he draws our attention to the urgent need for secularization and modernization in Islam. The Muslim world is in crisis. Lost in the Sacred explains why.

Text in German. One of the philosophical self-understanding texts of the 20th century that has so far received little attention is the fundamental debate that Jewish philosophers and theologians led after the National Socialists came to power. In newspapers, magazines and books, until the violent end of Jewish public life in Germany in 1938, there was still a passionate argument about contemporary and "true" Judaism for half a decade. Central interpretations beyond the much invoked "German-Jewish symbiosis" came mainly from the theological side. While the law-abiding Rabbi Alexander Altmann (19061987) clung to halachic Judaism as the central meaning for Jews, the young religious historian Hans-Joachim Schoeps (19091980) favored the content of Karl Barth's Christian dialectical theology. The common point of reference in these discussions was not infrequently Franz Rosenzweig (18861929), whose work had received a remarkable reception since 1933. In view of the existential threat, philosophers also participate in the controversy over the question "What is Judaism?" The essay mainly examines the polemic by Leo Strauss (18991973), whose book Philosophy and Law from 1935 had become a manifesto for contemporaries. His sharp criticism of the turning away from the sources of Judaism, as Maimonides (11381204) had canonized in his writings, resulted in a redefinition of the Enlightenment and tradition in Judaism. Among other things, the philosopher Julius Guttmann (18801950) and his student Fritz Bamberger (19021984) responded with a defense of liberal Judaism.

Cataclysms is a profoundly original look at the last century. Approaching twentieth-century history from the periphery rather than the centers of decision-making, the virtual narrator sits perched on the legendary stairs of Odessa and watches as events between the Baltic and the Aegean pass in review, unfolding in space and time between 1917 and 1989, while evoking the nineteenth century as an interpretative backdrop. Influenced by continental historical, legal, and social thought, Dan Diner views the totality of world history evolving from an Eastern and Southeastern European angle. A work of great synthesis, ""Cataclysms"" chronicles twentieth century history as ""universal civil war"" between a succession of conflicting dualisms such as freedom and equality, race and class, capitalism and communism, liberalism and fascism, East and West. Diner's interpretation rotates around cataclysmic events in the transformation from multinational empires into nation states, accompanied by social revolution and ""ethnic cleansing,"" situating the Holocaust at the core of the century's predicament. Unlike other Eurocentric interpretations of the last century, Diner also highlights the emerging pivotal importance of the United States and the impact of decolonization on the process of European integration.

Memories of mass crime constitute parameters for universal ethics. Memories of the Holocaust account for this. A paradigmatic meaning has been attached to the extermination of the European Jews. By now other memories of mass crime demand public commemoration in order to gain recognition. Such pluralism of memories bears a considerable potential for conflict, especially when all suffering was caused by one historical event - the Second World War. Then, opposing constellations and competition of remembrance become apparent - not only between the political cultures of Western and Eastern Europe but also, and especially between European and colonial memories. Dan Diners' essay discusses the problem of opposing memories of the Second World War and the Holocaust by terminology and historical background of remembrance. After assuring that "Auschwitz" stands for a break in civilisation, he reflects on preconditions of historical judgements and recognition of remembrance. Dan Diner predicts dramatic differences even oppositions between Western and non-European cultures - especially of Islamic background.

With this essay, Yuri Slezkine stands in a series of interpretations that have made the connection between social minority and social success in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the subject of their analysis. The fascination that emanates from his brilliantly written essay lies in the fact that he dissolves the primarily "ethnic" grounded argument through universalizations and shows how secondary virtues of modernity that are considered to be "Jewish" generalize and are thus brought to their historical concept. With his thesis of "Mercury" modernity, a world in which everyone has finally become "Jewish", Slezkine shows how in the European fin de siècle social habitus rationalized into ethnic difference. Using literary examples - Kafka, Proust, Joyce - he traces the Jewish and non-Jewish variants of a tendency which in the case of the Jews developed in three directions: towards communism, Zionism and the pluralistic, multi-ethnic liberalism of America. Slezkine's essay is a controversial contribution to the still untapped potential of Jewish historical experience.

We live in a historical end-time that erases the legacy of the nineteenth century in all areas of social and individual life. Our epoch at the turn of two centuries has come to an end and there are many indications that the twentieth century will not be a continuation but the reversal of the nineteenth. ... So I want my memories to be understood as materials for the history of my time, a story of the intellectual struggles at the beginning of this era and the political struggles at its end. "Simon Dubnow 1934Simon Dubnow's book of life comprises three parts, which in three Volumes are published. Volume 1 brings to mind childhood and youth, the apprenticeship years and the beginning of journalistic work such as historical research in Petersburg and Odessa in the years 1860 to 1903. In it Dubnow describes traditional Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the dawn of modernity.

An English-language collection of the major essays of Dan Diner who is widely read and quoted in Germany and Israel. They reflect the author's belief that the Holocaust transcends traditional patterns of historical understanding and requires an epistemologically distinct approach.

In this essay, German-Israeli historian Dan Diner argues that the European consciousness uses America as a metaphor for the dark sides of modernism. He finds an especially aggressive variant of this negative judgement in Germany, the roots of which he traces back to the Romantic period.