Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous revelation which is closely intertwined with human reason and not limited to the Theophany at Mount Sinai. A highly liberal strand of Judaism, it is characterized by little stress on ritual and personal observance, regarding Jewish law as non-binding and the individual Jew as autonomous, and by a great openness to external influences and progressive values.
A Judenrat was an administrative body established in German-occupied Europe during World War II which purported to represent a Jewish community in dealings with the Nazi authorities. The Germans required Jews to form Judenräte across the occupied territories at local and sometimes national levels.
There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times, with individuals living in various cities before the American Revolution. Early Jewish communities were primarily composed of Sephardi immigrants from Brazil, Amsterdam, or England.
The Haskalah, often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish emancipation.
Leo Baeck was a 20th-century German rabbi, scholar, and theologian. He served as leader of Reform Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era. After the Second World War, he settled in London, in the United Kingdom, where he served as the chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was its first international president. The Leo Baeck Medal has been awarded since 1978 to those who have helped preserve the spirit of German-speaking Jewry in culture, academia, politics, and philanthropy.
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321 CE, and continued through the Early Middle Ages and High Middle Ages when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The community survived under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews, while others fled in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms became the center of Jewish life during medieval times. "This was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews, resulting in increased trade and prosperity."
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camps. Its conditions were deliberately engineered to hasten the death of its prisoners, and the ghetto also served a propaganda role. Unlike other ghettos, the exploitation of forced labor was not economically significant.
Alfred Flatow was a Jewish German gymnast. He competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was murdered in the Holocaust.
The Jewish question was a wide-ranging debate in 19th- and 20th-century Europe that pertained to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews. The debate, which was similar to other "national questions", dealt with the civil, legal, national, and political status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Jewish assimilation refers either to the gradual cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture or to an ideological program in the age of emancipation promoting conformity as a potential solution to historic Jewish marginalization.
Paradise Camp is a 1986 documentary film about Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, written and directed by Australians Paul Rea and Frank Heimans, respectively. Czechoslovakian Jews were first told that Theresienstadt was a community established for their safety. They quickly recognized it as a ghetto and concentration camp.
In the early modern era, European Jews were confined to ghettos and placed under strict regulations as well as restrictions in many European cities. The character of ghettos fluctuated over the centuries. In some cases, they comprised a Jewish quarter, the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. In many instances, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and small, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving at those times.
Deborah Hertz is an American historian whose specialties are modern German history, modern Jewish history and modern European women's history. Her current research focuses on the history of radical Jewish women.
Benjamin Israel Murmelstein was an Austrian rabbi. He was one of 17 community rabbis in Vienna in 1938 and the only one remaining in Vienna by late 1939. An important figure and board member of the Jewish group in Vienna during the early stages of the war, he was also an "Ältester" of the Judenrat in the Theresienstadt concentration camp after 1943. He was the only "Judenältester" to survive the Holocaust and has been credited with saving the lives of thousands of Jews by assisting in their emigration, while also being accused of being a Nazi collaborator.
Pauline Wengeroff (1833–1916), born Pessele Epstein, was the author of a first-of-its kind memoir by a Jewish woman, in which she refracts a period in Jewish history—the emergence and unfolding of Jewish modernity in nineteenth-century Russian Poland—through the experience of women and families.
The League of Jewish Women in Germany was founded in 1904 by Bertha Pappenheim. Pappenheim led the JFB throughout the first twenty years of its existence, and remained active in it until her death in 1936. The JFB became increasingly popular through the 20th century. At its peak in 1928, the organization had 50,000 members from 34 local branches and 430 subsidiary groups. At the time, the JFB was Germany's third largest Jewish organization, with 15-20% of Jewish women in Germany becoming members.
The history of German women covers gender roles, personalities and movements from medieval times to the present in German-speaking lands.
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia resulted in the deportation, dispossession, and murder of most of the pre-World War II population of Jews in the Czech lands that were annexed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945.
Marion Kaplan is Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University. She is a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for her non-fiction writing about German-Jewish history, Jewish refugees, and Holocaust history. Established in 1950, these awards recognize outstanding achievement in Jewish writing and research.
