People
Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi
Director and permanent academic member of the Koebner Minerva Center
Professor of History at the History Department, Holder of the Ben-Eliezer Chair in Modern History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Ashkenazi has published on various topics related to German and German-Jewish history, from filmmaking and photography to the interwar German peace movement and German-Jewish immigrants in Mandate Palestine. His current research project considers Jewish photography in Nazi Germany.
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After he received his PhD from the Hebrew University in 2006, he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include Central European cultural and intellectual history, German-Jewish experience under Nazism, modern visual culture, and memory culture in twentieth-century Europe. He is the author of four monographs: Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (2025, co-authored with Rebekka Grossmann, Shira Miron and Sarah Wobick-Segev), Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape, 1918-1968 (2020); Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity (2012); and A Walk into the Night: Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Film (2010). He is the editor and co-editor of several volumes of collected essays, including Einstein, Freud and the Wars to Come: Why War in Context (2018, with Eran Rolnik and David Bar-Gal); “Place and Space in the German-Jewish Experience of the 1930s” (2023, special volume of Jewish Culture and History, with David Juenger and Bjoern Siegel); and the forthcoming Rethinking Jewish History and Memory through Photography (fall 2025, with Thomas Pegelow-Kaplan). He has published articles on various topics, including German-Jewish cultural history, German-Jewish immigration to Palestine, exile photography, the discussion of Nazi violence in post-1945 Germany, and the German peace movement.
Between 2021 and 2025 Prof. Ashkenazi served as the Vice Dean for Teaching Affairs in the Humanities. Between 2019 and 2023 he was a member of the Israel Young Academia. He is currently a member of The International Commission for the Investigation of the Terror Attack at the 1972 Olympic Games, (Kommission zur Aufarbeitung des Olympia-Attentats 1972). He held a Visting-Professor positions in various institutions, including the Joice Z. Greenberg Visiting Professorship at the University of Chicago, and the Mosse Visiting Professorship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Since 2022 he has served as a co-editor of Historia, the journal of the Israeli Historical Society.
His current research projects reflect his diverse interests: “The Future of the Past: Developing NLP Tools for a Data-Driven Algorithmic Analysis of Documentary Narratives of the Holocaust” (with Renana Kedar, Amit Pinchevski, Omri Abend, and Gavriel Stanovsky, funded through a grant from Israel Council for Higher Education); “German-Jewish Environmental History” (with Guy Miron, Israel Science Fund); and “Zwischen Alija und Flucht. Jüdische Jugendbünde und zionistische Erziehung unter dem NS-Regime und im vorstaatlichen Israel 1933–1945“ (with Ulrike Pilarczyk, Deutsche Forschung Gesellschaft). Together with Annette Vowinckel and Rebekka Grossmann he is developing a project on Jewish refugess from Nazi Germany (funded by Minerva Project Fund). In addition, together with Anat Vogman, he works on a documentary film based on his research (funded through Yad Hanadiv and Gesher).
Prof. Ashkenazi teaches a variety of courses on topics ranging from the the history and commemoration of the Holocaust to modern visual culture. He often teaches survey course on modern European history, World War One and Interwar Europe, as well as seminars on Nazism, German-Jewish history, the history of cinema, and photography as historiograpy.
In 2025/26 Prof. Ashkenazi is George Mosse Visiting Professor at the UW-Madison, USA.
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
Monographs:
Ofer Ashkenazi, Sarah Wobick-Segev, Rebekka Grossman, Shira Miron, Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Ofer Ashkenazi, Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity (Palgrave-McMillan, 2012)
Recent Edited Volumes:
Ofer Ashkenazi, Thomas Pegelow-Kaplan (eds.), Rethinking Jewish History and Memory Through Photography (SUNY, 2025)
Ulrike Pilarczyk, Ofer Ashkenazi, Arne Homann (eds.), Hachschara und Jugend-Alija. Wege jüdischer Jugend nach Palästine, 1918-1940 (Gifhorn: Gemeinnützige Bildungs- und Kultur des Landkreises Gifhorn, 2020)
Selected Articles in Refereed Journals:
Lectures
-- “Paying Attention at the End of the World: How Felix Axelrad (Almost) Missed the Rise of Nazism,” German Studies Association Conference, Arlington, September 2025
-- Roundtable discussant, “The 100th Volume: Thirty Years of German Studies Scholarship at the University of Michigan Press,” German Studies Association Conference, Arlington, September 2025
-- Participant, The New New Science Working Group in Digital Humanities, Santa Fe, September 2025
-- “Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany,” Frankfurt Jewish Museum, July 2025
-- “Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany,” Colorado University, Boulder, April 2025
-- "Jewish Photography and Experiences in Nazi Germany," Keynote, The 23rd Simon Dubnow Lecture, Leipzig, November 2024
-- Roundtable discussant, “The Lives and Afterlives of Amateur Soldier-Photography in WWII,” The Lives and Afterlives of Amateur Soldier-Photography in WWII, Berlin, June 2025.
-- “Reaktionen israelischer Medien auf den Olympia-Anschlag 1972/73,” The 1972 Munich Olympics Attack in an International and Transnational Contexts, Munich, June 2025.
-- “AI-Based Analysis of Holocaust Photography: Why Should Historians Care” The Future of the Past Conference, Hebrew University, October 2024.
Recent Reviews, Interviews, Essays, and Podcasts:
"Mass Violence and Responsibility: The Changing Politics of the Historians' Debates," Introduction to a special issue of Historia: Journal of the Israeli Historical Society 52 (2024).
“How Civil Society Saved Israel’s Democracy and, most likely, Destroyed it: October 7 and the Protest Movement,” in: Zeitgeschichte-online, Oktober 2024
“Triumph des Willens, 90 Years Later,” Kan-Bet Weekend Magazine (March 28, 2025 - Podcast)
“Anti-Heimat Cinema,” New Books Network (January 9, 2024 - Podcast)
“The Atom Letter: Albert Einstein and the Nuclear Bomb,” Sincerely, Beth Avi Chai Podcast Series
“The First Selfie in History,” History of Photography Podcast Series, Making History Podcast
“1933,” The Twentieth Century: A Year in an Hour (Kan 11)
“1914,” The Twentieth Century: A Year in an Hour (Kan 11)
Photo credit: Esther Lassman
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MIcha Danziger
PhD Fellow
Academic Interests: Intellectual History, Philosophical approaches to the Shoah and Nazism, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Post-WWII Philosophy, Conceptual History of Crisis.
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Micha Danziger is a Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research is on the philosophical crisis that occurred in reaction to Nazism and the Shoah. The focuses is on the philosophical writings, lectures and debates that were published and recorded during or immediately after WWII, exploring and explaining the intellectual “stimmung” of the postwar period. The object of this research is to shed light on the specific event of Nazism and the Shoah, where philosophers were trying to engage historical events which imbedded in them a metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological rupture. It also expands on the intellectual and conceptual history of crisis.
He received the President of State Scholarship for Excellence and Scientific Innovation in 2022.
CV
Education
2019 – Present Ph.D. Candidate, History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry
2015 – 2018 M.A – Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Fall 2016 Exchange Philosophy Master Program, University of Toronto, Canada
2011 – 2014 B.A - Philosophy Major, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professional Courses and Seminars
Summer 2022 Summer School - "Crises, Change, and Creativity in Jewish Experience", Mandel School for the
Advanced Study in the Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Summer 2018 Auschwitz Seminar, Auschwitz Institute and Yad Vashem, Poland
2014 – 2017 Goethe German Language Courses, to level: B, Goethe Institute, Jerusalem
Summer 2016 Summer Semester – German Language Course in Graz, Austria
Summer 2015 German Jewish Life in Germany and Language Course, University of Tubingen, Germany
2014 Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum Educational Guide Course, Jerusalem
Employment
Humanities Faculty, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2018 – Present TA to Prof. Arnold Davidson in courses: “Theological Implications of the Shoah”, "Comparative
Existentialisms: From Sartre to Soloveitchik" “The Philosophy Modern Orthodox Judaism”,
“Literature of Shoah, Philosophy in Shoah”, “Michel Foucault: Power and Self”
2017 – 2019 TA to Prof. Meir Buzaglo in course "Introduction to Analytical Philosophy"
2016 TA to Prof. Elchanan Yakira in Course "Spinoza & Liebniz"
2015 – 2016 Archivist for Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
2022 Lecturer, Teachers Supplementary Course, "Thinkers and Thought After the Shoah"
2014 – Present Educational Guide, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
2018 Educational Development, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
Other
2019 – Present Philosophy Lecturer, “Introduction to Philosophy”, Ruach HaSadeh Military
Preparation Academy, Be'erot Yitzchak
2020 - Present Philosophy Lecturer, “Introduction to Philosophy”, “Hevruta” Gap Year Mechina Program,
Hartman Institute, Jerusalem
2019 – 2020 Research Assistant to Prof. H. James Burgwyn, conducting primary and secondary source
research for “Fiorenzo Capriotti Biography”
Peer Review Publication
"Kantian Theoretical Hope", in Contemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy, 5 (2020)
Conference Presentation
2023 “The Crisis of Man – Albert Camus in Crisis”, NASSP 40th International Social Philosophy Conference,
University of Portland, Oregon, USA
2023 “‘The Concentration Camps’ - Hannah Arendt in Crisis”, Israel Philosophical Association, Ben- Gurion
University, Israel
2022 "Albert Camus's Post-WWII Philosophical-Historical Crisis", International academic conference: Crisis as a
Philosophical Category, UMCS in Lublin
2022 “’The Crisis of Man’: Albert Camus and The Shoah”, Shoah Research Student Conference, Israel Historical
Society, Israel
2022 “’The Concentration Camps’: Hannah Arendt’s Philosophical-Historical Crisis”, Leo Baeck Annual German
Studies Conference, Israel
2019 “Kantian Theoretical Hope”, Wuhan Kant Conference, Wuhan University, China
Conference Organizer
2024 Annual Israel Conference of German Studies: Language, Culture, Society, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Honors and Awards
2022 – 2025 Presidential Endowment Scholarship for Excellence
2021 – 2024 The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History PhD Fellowship, Hebrew University
2022 + 2024 Yad Vashem Doctoral Studies Research Grant
2020 – 2022 Excellence Scholarship - Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2019 – 2021 KKL Israel-Switzerland Philosophy Fund Prize
2019 – 2020 Henri Aboulker and Daniel Colette Jewish Studies Prize, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2015 – 2016 Blumenthal Scholarship – Spielberg Jewish Movie Archive, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2011 – 2014 Chavruta Scholarship - Bet Hillel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Army Service
2007 - 2010 Combat Squad Commander, “Nachal” Combat Infantry
Languages
English – Mother tongue, Hebrew – Fluent, German – B2.
References
Prof. Manuela Consonni –Director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University
Prof. Arnold I. Davidson - Department of Philosophy, Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of
Science, University of Chicago
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Dr. Lorena De Vita
2019 Research Guest - Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Lorena De Vita is an Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on German-Israeli relations, the global Cold War and the role of diplomacy in international politics.
Prof. Aya Elyada
Permanent academic member of the Koebner Minerva Center
Associate Professor at the History Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Aya Elyada is a cultural historian specializing in German and German-Jewish history, Christian-Jewish relations, Yiddish studies, the history of the Yiddish-German encounter, and the social and cultural history of language and translation.
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Before joining the Hebrew University in 2012, I spent five years as a visiting PhD student at the University of Munich, and another three years as a visiting post-doctoral fellow at Duke University.
My first book, “A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany,” appeared in 2012 with Stanford University Press. The book explores the unique and unlikely phenomenon of “Christian Yiddishism” in early modern Germany, namely the Christian interest in and engagement with Yiddish language and literature from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century. It explains why some Christians were preoccupied with Yiddish and discusses the various ways in which they depicted this Jewish language and literature in their writings. In the process, it sheds light on the broader linguistic, theological, cultural, and social concerns of early modern Christian authors and their intellectual environment.
My second book, “A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture, 1818–1938,” is forthcoming in 2026 with Stanford University Press. The book explores a relatively unknown chapter in the German-Jewish “romance with the past,” namely the engagement of German-speaking Jewish authors, scholars, and intellectuals with their Yiddish literary heritage. As I show in the book, although Old Yiddish literature ceased to be published in the German territories already in the beginning of the nineteenth century, this early modern literary corpus did not entirely disappear from the cultural landscape of modern German Jews. Instead, these texts continued to be retold, translated, adapted, discussed, and explored in the works of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century German-Jewish authors. By this, Old Yiddish literature gained a rich afterlife in modern German-Jewish culture, serving as the focus of lively discussions on a range of pertinent topics: tradition and secularization, acculturation and nostalgia, emancipation and antisemitism, gender relations, and religious reform.
Since 2019, I am a member of the International Research Training Group "Belongings: Jewish Material Culture in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond", which is a cooperation between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leipzig University, and the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow, Leipzig.
Employment and Positions
2025– Associate Professor, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Fall 2023 Visiting Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
2020-2023 Chair of the History Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2019-2020 Interim Director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2018-2019 Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford UK
2017-2025 Senior Lecturer (tenured), Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2012-2017 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Fall 2010 Visiting Lecturer at the Department of History, Tel Aviv University
2009-2012 Visiting Scholar, Department of History, Duke University
Education
2010 PhD The Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University
2004-2009 PhD studies at The Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University, and as a visiting doctoral student at the Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.
2001-2004 MA The Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University. summa cum laude.
1998-2001 BA Department of History, School of History’s Honors Program and Amirim Honors Program in Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, summa cum laude.
Fellowships and Grants (recent years)
2024-2029 DFG Funding for the International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Belongings: Jewish Material Culture in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond” (Jerusalem/Leipzig, co-applicant and a PI in the group)
2024-2027 Research Grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), in collaboration with Prof. Astrid Lembke, University of Mannheim: “Old Yiddish Adaptations of German Literary Texts, 1400–1800: Cultural Transfer and Christian-Jewish Relations in Early Modern Germany”
2022 Grant of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities for organizing an international conference on “Translation and Inter-Religious Dialogue Between Early Modern Christians, Muslims, and Jews,” Ma’ale ha’Hamisha, Israel (with Prof. Iris Idelson-Shein, Ben-Gurion University, and Prof. Rebekka Voß, University of Frankfurt)
2020 Grant of the Minerva Stiftung for organizing an international workshop on “German and Jewish Cultures in Dialogue: Literary Encounters from the Reformation to the Second World War,” The Koebner Minerva Center for German History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Selected Publications
Books
- A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture, 1818–1938 Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2026 (forthcoming).
- A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany., Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. - Reviewed in: The American Historical Review 118:5 (2013), 1587-1589; Sixteenth Century Journal 44:4 (2013), 1183-1185; AJS Review 37:2 (2013), 425-427; Religious Studies Review 39:4 (2013), 282-283; The Yiddish Daily Forward April 25, 2013; Jewish Culture and History 15:1-2 (2014), 141-144; Journal of Early Modern History 18:6 (2014), 609-611.
Edited Volumes
- Aya Elyada and Matthew Johnson, Guest Editors of "Old Yiddish Literature: Historical and Cultural Perspectives" - Special Issue of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies (2024; online publication)
- Aya Elyada, Guest Editor of "German and Jewish Cultures in Dialogue: Literary Encounters from the Reformation to the Second World War" - Special Issue of Tabur: Yearbook for European History, Society, Culture and Thought 12 (2024; online publication) [in Hebrew}.
- Kerry Wallach and Aya Elyada (eds.), German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations, New York: Berghahn, 2023.
- Irene Aue-Ben-David, Aya Elyada, Moshe Sluhovsky, and Christian Wiese (eds.), Jews and Protestants from the Reformation to the Present, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.
- Aya Elyada, Guest Editor of Yiddish in German and German-Jewish Culture: Special Issue of Naharaim – Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 10 (2016).
Selected Articles
- “Between the Jewish Past and the German Present: Old Yiddish Texts and German-Jewish Nostalgia,” Tabur: Yearbook for European History, Society, Culture and Thought 12 (2024; online publication https://tabur.huji.ac.il/ ) [in Hebrew].
- (With Kerry Wallach), “German-Jewish Studies for the Twenty-First Century,” Chidushim: Studies in the History of German and Central European Jewry 25 (2023), 9–25 [in Hebrew].
- “Old Yiddish Texts in German-Jewish Culture: Diachronic Translation and the (Re)turn to the Past,” in Kerry Wallach and Aya Elyada (eds.), German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations, New York: Berghahn, 2023, 38–57.
- “Contested Heritage: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Yiddish Biblical Literature in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Zion: A Quarterly for the Research of Jewish History 86:4 (2021), 563–591 [in Hebrew].
- “The Vernacular Bible Between Jews and Protestants: Translation and Polemics in Early Modern Germany,” in Irene Aue-Ben-David, Aya Elyada, Moshe Sluhovsky, and Christian Wiese (eds.), Jews and Protestants from the Reformation to the Present, Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, 103–118.
- "Oluf Gerhard Tychsen und die christliche Auseinandersetzung mit dem Jiddischen," in: Rafael Arnold et al. (eds.), Der Rostocker Gelehrte Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734-1815) und seine internationalen Netzwerke, Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2019, 153–176.
- “Between Rejection and Nostalgia: Yiddish as a Post-Vernacular in Modern German-Jewish Culture,” Chidushim – Studies in the History of German and Central European Jewry 20 (2018): 6-26 [in Hebrew].
- "Deutsch-jüdisches Gelehrtentum und altjiddische Literatur: Zur Rehabilitierung einer vergessenen Tradition," Naharaim – Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 11(2017), 167-188.
- "Bridges to a Bygone Jewish Past? Abraham Tendlau and the Rewriting of Yiddish Folktales in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16 (2017), 419–436
- "Early Modern Yiddish and the Jewish Volkskunde, 1880-1938," Jewish Quarterly Review 107 (2017), 182-208.
- "Zwischen Austausch und Polemik: Christliche Übersetzungen jiddischer Literatur im Deutschland der Frühneuzeit," Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 69 (2017), 47-73.
- “Yiddish and German in Early Modern Christian Works,” Chidushim – Studies in the History of German and Central European Jewry 15 (2011), 41-55 [in Hebrew].
- “‘Eigentlich Teutsch’? Depictions of Yiddish and Its Relations to German in Early Modern Christian Writings,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 4 (2010), 23-42.
- “Protestant Scholars and Yiddish Studies in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 203 (2009), 69-98.
- “Yiddish – Language of Conversion? Linguistic Adaptation and Its Limits in Early Modern Judenmission,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 53 (2008), 3-29.
Research Students
Current Students
Alicja Markowska, 2025–: Dvarim Polanim. Material Culture and Changing Identity of Polish Jews in Israel across the 20th Century (Ph.D. thesis, Leipzig University; joint supervision with Prof. Anna Artwinska, Leipzig )
Ines Gerber, 2025–: Processing Loss and Fostering Resilience: Jewish and Female Sculptural Strategies of Coping with the 20th Century (Ph.D. thesis, Leipzig University; joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss)
Ariel Chen-Tzion, 2025–: Mother Tongue and the People’s Tongue: Arye Dulchin, The National Institutes, and Yiddish Culture in Israel (MA thesis)
Yoav Shefer, 2024–: Protestant Theology and Nineteenth-Century German Historiography (MA thesis)
Sophie Rabenow, 2024–: Places of Jewish Knowledge: The Wissenschaft des Judentums and its Material Sites in Berlin’s Urban Landscape, 1871–1961 (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Dr. Elisabeth Gallas, DI Leipzig)
Shira Fried, 2024–: The “Beyt-Ya’acov” Movement in Interwar Poland (Ph.D. thesis, joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss)
Arseniy Agroskin, 2022-: The Reception of Sefer Nizzahon among Early Modern Christian and Jewish Readers (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Prof. Israel Yuval)
Past Students:
Daniel Lehmann, 2018-2025: Representations of the Reformation in the Protestant-Jewish Polemic: Intra-Christian Conflict in the "Presence" of Jews (Ph.D. thesis, joint supervision with Prof. Ram Ben-Shalom)
Bilha Shilo, 2018-2025: A University of Refugees: Admission Applications to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1939 (Ph.D. thesis, joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss)
Meirav Reuveni, 2017-2022: Polemics on the Hebrew Language in the Tri-Lingual Jewish Press in Central and Eastern Europe 1856-1914 (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Prof. Richi Cohen).
Amit Levy, 2016-2021: The New Orient: German-Jewish Orientalism in Palestine/Israel (Ph.D. thesis, joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss)
Yael Levi, 2016-2020: The Emergence of the Yiddish and Hebrew Press in the United States, 1870–1900: Culture, Law, and Politics (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss)
Niels Eggerz, 2013-2020: Converted Through God’s Grace, Becoming like the Other: Johan Kemper (Moses Aaron/Johann Christian Jacob) and his Commentary on the Zohar (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Prof. Paweł Maciejko)
Tuvia Singer, 2013-2020: Jews, 'Gypsies' and the Volk: Wandering Minorities in the Folk-Narratives and German Mythology of Brothers Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein (Ph.D. thesis; joint supervision with Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem)
Rima (Reyze) Turner, 2017-2019: Confronting the Jewish Rejection of Jewish Particularism: Chaim Zhitlowsky’s Pedagogical Intervention into Ashkenazi American Assimilation (M.A. thesis, summa cum laude)
Daniel Lehmann, 2016-2018: Anthonius Margaritha's Refutation of the Jews' Entire Faith and the Past, Present, and Future of the Christian-Jewish Polemic (M.A. thesis, summa cum laude)
Meirav Reuveni, 2015-2017: Shai Ish Hurwitz and the Journal "heAtid" (1903-1914): Historical Consciousness and the Revival of the Hebrew Language (M.A. thesis, magna cum laude)
Amit Levy, 2014-2016: From Breslau to Jerusalem: Martin Plessner's Encounters with the Orient (M.A. thesis, joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss, summa cum laude)
Academic Teaching (selected courses)
Language and the Construction of Culture in Germany, 15th-18th centuries
The Yiddish-German Encounter Throughout the Ages
Christian Hebraism in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
The Reformation as a Religious, Social, and Cultural Revolution
Luther, the Reformation and the German Language
Christian-Jewish Relations in the First Reich (1096-1648)
Religion and Society in 16th-Century Germany
Poverty and Crime in Early Modern Europe
Subordinated Groups in Early Modern Germany
Women and Gender in the Protestant Reformation
Books and Readers in Early Modern Germany
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Prof. Amir Engel
Affiliated academic member of the Koebner Minerva Center
Associate Professor, Department of German and Literature, Department of German Language and Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Amir Engel is a professor in the German Department of the Hebrew University and currently also a visiting professor for the history and present of Christian-Jewish relations at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt University in Berlin.
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Amir Engel studied philosophy, literature, and cultural studies at the Hebrew University and received his doctorate in the German Department at Stanford University. He subsequently taught and researched at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. His main topics include German-Jewish Romanticism and German-Jewish postwar literature and culture. His first book, Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography, was published in 2017. He has also published essays on Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Martin Buber, Jacob Taubes, Salomon Maimon, and others. He is currently completing his second book manuscript, provisionally titled The German Spirit from its Jewish Sources: Occultism as Jewish-Christian-German Negotiation.
1. HIGHER EDUCATION
1998 - 2002 B.A. Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2002 - 2004 M.A. Cultural Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Thesis: “History and Being in Walter Benjamin’s The Origin of the German Tragic Drama.”
Advisors: Hannan Hever, Bernhard Greiner
2005 - 2011 Ph.D. German Studies, Stanford University (conferred June 2011) Dissertation: “Rewriting the Myth: Gershom Scholem, Zionism and Kabbalah” Committee: Amir Eshel (chair [e.g., Advisor]), Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Russell Berman
2012 – 2016 Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Die Martin-Buber-Professur für Jüdische Religionsphilosophie, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main
2. APPOINTMENTS
July 1, 2016, Assistant Professor, Department of German Language and Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
December 24, 2022, Associate Professor, Department of German and Literature, Department of German Language and Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
September 1, 2023 Vertretungsprofessor für Geschichte und Gegenwart des christlich- jüdischen Verhältnisses, Theologische Fakultät, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
3. ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS/TASKS AT THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY
Chair, Department of German Language and Literature
BA and MA advisor, Department of German Language and Literature
Chair, Graduate Student Network, the Faculty of Humanities. The network organizes events for career development and networking to support graduate students of all the disciplines in the humanities.
Coordinator, New-Faculty Forum in the Humanities. (Together with Eviater Shulman) (2018- 2020). The forum organizes events for new faculty to facilitate networking and discussions about the challenges facing new faculty.
4. SERVICE IN OTHER ACADEMIC AND RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS
Advisory board member: The Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society at Haifa University.
Board member of the Hevruta program for Graduate Students at the Hebrew University.
5. OTHER
a. Awards and Fellowship
2009 - 2010 Die Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Leo Baeck Fellowship 2010 – 2011 Mellon Foundation, Dissertation completion grant
2014- 2015 Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Grant
2015 Minerva Foundation Fellowship (Declined)
2016 Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Hebrew University Teaching Award for years 2015 and 2017
b. Other Academic Activity
Organized panel in Annual German Studies Association and the Annual Conference of the European Jewish Studies association.
Member of the German Studies Association
Member of the Modern Language Association of America
c. Social Impact/ Service
Recent Reviews of book manuscripts for Routledge, Indiana University Press, articles for Humanities, Zutot, Naharaim, Chidushim, Comparative Literature, Chidushim in German Jewish History, Jewish Studies Quarterly, and grant applications for the fellowship program at the American Academy in Berlin, DAAD, and Azrieli Fellow Program.
d. Academic (non- research Grants)
2020 HUJI-FUB Joint Online Course: This program offers financing to develop and run a virtual course in collaboration with the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) for a course titled “Contemporary German-Jewish Culture” taught in the summer semester of 2022. The funding of 4000 was split. I won 2000/4000. All the funding was used to run the course and pay the guest speakers.
2024 Fritz Thyssen Foundation with Prof. Elad Lapidot (Université de Lille France). The sum 14,000 Euro was split in two. I won 7000/14000. The funds were used to organize the conference “State and Exile in Jewish Thought. Book Proceedings are forthcoming.” All of the funding was used for the conference.
6. RESEARCH GRANTS
Rejected
2018 ISF Personal Research Grant, “The Rise and Fall of the Vision of a German-Jewish “Communitas””
2019 ISF Personal Research Grant, “German-Jewish Esotericism: Major Trends”
2021 ISF Personal Research Grant, “Jewish-Christian Religiosity: German Idealism, Jewish Mysticism, and the History of Spirituality in Germany at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” 2021 Gerda Henkel Foundation Research Grant, “Ernst Müller’s Esotericism: Towards a German-Jewish-Christian Theology.”
Submitted
2024 Joint DFG-ISF Research Grant Application together with Prof. Andreas Kraß (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin). Requested budget (Israeli side) 285,738 NIS. Project title “Queer Jewish Literature in German, 1949–1969: Nationality, Heteronormativity and Jewishness after World War II”
7. TEACHING AT THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY
A. Supervision of master and doctoral degree students in the last five years Master's degree students:
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Tamar Gutfeld- “Modes of Representation in Jürek Beckcer’s Jacob the Liar.” (2017 - 2019)
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Reem Salem- “Goethe’s Muslim Women: A reading in Ost-West Diwan” (Submitted 2019- 2022)
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Noach Engelhard– “The Victim of Redemption: Ingeborg Bachmann's Ways of Death in Dialogue with Jewish-Exilic Literature” (2023- 2024)
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Asaf Sudry- “Lenz’s Lunacy and the Romantic Critique” (started 2024)
Doctoral degree students:
1. Thorina Lepack- dissertation title: “The Mann’s Exile: Three generations of German twentieth-century exiles”. Started Sep 2018 and now in the second stage. Directed in collaboration with Prof. Ofer Ashkenzazi. (2018- submitted 2024)
2. Guy Paz- dissertation title: “German Anthroposophy and Kabbalah: The Curious Case of Ernst Müller.” Started Sep 2018 and now in the second stage. Directed in collaboration with Prof. Benjamin Pollock. (Started September 2018). Publication #38 is based on my work in cooperation with Guy Paz and is credited to us both.
3. Avihai Danieli- “Modern Jewish Historiography and the Problem of Messianism.” Directed in collaboration with Demitry Shumsky (September 2023)
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS Amir Engel
Last updated: 18 February 2025
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION:
1. Amir Engel, Rewriting the Myth: Gershom Scholem, Zionism and Kabbalah
Committee: Amir Eshel (chair), Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Russell Berman. Awarded: June 2011, Stanford University.
BOOKS:
2. Amir Engel, Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2017), 225 pp. Paperback edition appeared in summer 2019.
BOOKS EDITED: Prior to Appointment
3. Jacob Taubes, From Cult to Culture: Fragments toward a Critique of Historical Reason. Eds. Amir Engel and Charlotte Fonrobert, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 445 pp.
4. Michael Fisch und Amir Engel, Eds. Transcultural Hermeneutics II: Contributions by Invitation of the Department of German Language and Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, (Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2021), 317 pp. in German.
CHAPTERS IN COLLECTIONS:
5. Amir Engel and Assaf Sharon. “How could it not Happen? A Thought Experiment and a Discussion on Military Violence”, in: The Blot of a Light Cloud; Israeli Soldiers, Army, and Society in the Intifada, Ed. Yoel Elizur, (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012), 234 – 263, in Hebrew .
6. Amir Engel, “Gershom Scholem’s ‘Kabbalah and Myth’ Beyond German Jewish Romanticism,” Gershom Scholem in Deutschland: Zwischen Seelenverwandtschaft und Sprachlosigkeit, Eds. Gerold Necker, Elke Morlok, and Matthias Morgenstern, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 203-218, in German.
7. Amir Engel, “1929,” Gershom Scholem: Building blocks of an Intellectual Biography, Eds. Andreas Kilcher and Daniel Weidner, (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag). In press, In German.
8. Amir Engel, “Gershom Scholem’s Kabbalah and the German Jewish Myth” in Collected Essay on Gershom Scholem’s Life and Work, Eds. Mirjam Zadoff and Noam Zadoff, (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 97-113.
9. Amir Engel, “A Brave New Word: Hannah Arendt’s Postwar Reading of Kafka” in Kafka after Kafka Eds. Iris Bruce and Mark Gelber (Rochester: Camden House, 2019), 29-44.
10. Amir Engel, “German-Jewish Esotericism: The Case of Meir Wiener’s Expressionist Kabbalah,” in Transcultural Hermeneutics II: Contributions by Invitation of the Department of German Language and Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Eds. Michael Fisch and Amir Engel, (Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2021), 53-65, in German. (Similar to # 20 in insights and general research. This version is translated from the original English, shortened, and changed slightly in emphasis and context.)
11. Amir Engel, “Dada and Gershom Scholem: die blauweisse Brille,” Gershom Scholem: Building blocks of an Intellectual Biography, Eds. Andreas Kilcher and Daniel Weidner, (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag), in Press, in German.
12. Amir Engel, “Joseph Klausner,” Gershom Scholem: Building blocks of an Intellectual Biography, Eds. Andreas Kilcher and Daniel Weidner, (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag), in Press, in German.
13. Amir Engel, “Esotericism: Kabbalah, Folktale, and Mysticism,” Tradition und Glaube: Handbuch deutschsprachig-jüdische Literatur, Eds., Alfred Bodenheimer, Stephan Braese, Primus- Heinz Kucher, Gerald Lamprecht, (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler), in Press.
14. Amir Engel “Ernst Müller’s Anthroposophical Zohar: Renewed Reflections on German-Jewish Spiritual History” Festschrift in Honor of Paul Mendes Flohr’s Eightieth Birthday, (Leo Baeck Instiute) in Press. In Hebrew.
15. Amir Engel, The Gnostic Myth as a Gambit in German Intellectual Tradition. In Hans Jonas, in Hans Jonas: The Early Years, Eds. Daniel M. Hershkowitz, Christian Wiese, and Elad Lapidot (Abingdon: Routledge 2024), 123-140. (Similar insights and research but further developed and more finely argued compared to the original #26).
ARTICLES:
Prior to Appointment
16. Amir Engel, “Reading Gershom Scholem in Context: Salomon Maimon’s and Gershom Scholem’s German Jewish Discourse on Jewish Mysticism,” New German Critique, 121, Vol. 41 No. 1 (2014), 33 - 54.
17. Amir Engel, “Above the Abyss and Away: Barbara Honigmann, Gershom Scholem and German Jewish Culture after the Holocaust,” Weimarer Beiträge, Issue 1, 2014, 68 – 81, in German.
18. Amir Engel, “Renewal in the Shadow of the Catastrophe: Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan in Germany,” German Studies Review, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2016, 297 - 314.
19. Amir Engel, “Hope, Despair, and Justice in Postwar European Culture: Bicycle Thieves, The Plague, and The Man Outside as Case Studies,” Comparative Literature 72, no. 1 (March 2020): 68–82.
20. Amir Engel “German-Jewish Esotericism: The Case of Meir Wiener’s Expressionist Kabbalah,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Volume 65, Issue 1, 2020, Pages 36–51.
21. Amir Engel, “Between Consequential Memory and Destruction: Karl Jaspers, Jean Améry, and the Intellectual History of Postwar West-Germany,” New German Critique, 140, Vol. 47, No. 2, 2020, 1- 20.
22. Amir Engel, ““Jugendbewegung”: Gerhard Scholem as a Figure of the German Avant- Garde,” Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture 18, 2021, 1–11.
23. Amir Engel, “The Affirmation of Exile in Contemporary German-Jewish Literature: A reading of Maxim Biller, Olga Grjasnowa, and Mati Shemoelof,” Prooftext Vol. 39 No. 2, 2022, 234-256.
24. Amir Engel, “Jewish–Christian Religiosity: A Study in Twentieth-Century Central European History.” Modern Intellectual History, 2022, 1–21.
25. Amir Engel, “From the Neue Gemeinschaft to Bar Kochba: The Jewish Communitas or the Idea of Jewish Politics as Mysticism,” Religions 2022, 13 no. 12, 1143, 1-19.
26. Amir Engel, “Hans Jonas’s Gnostic Myth: An Existentialist Worldview Between Romanticism and Christianity,” German Studies Review Volume 46, Number 3, October 2023, 409-426.
27. Amir Engel, “From a Jewish Army to Political Resignation: Hannah Arendt's Evolving Conception of Antisemitism,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, No. 32, December 2023, 167 – 185.
28. Amir Engel, Literature as Magic: The Supernatural Quest for the New in Carl Einstein’s Bebuquin, Journal of Avant-Garde Studies 3 (2023) 1–20.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS:
29. Amir Engel, “Seeking Mandela?” A review of Adam Heribert’s and Kogila Moodley’s Seeking Mandela: Peacemaking Between Israelis and Palestinians,” Telos 135, Summer 2005, 186 – 191.
30. Amir Engel, “On Loyalty and Historical Truth: A review of Elhanan Yakira’s Post Zionism, Post Holocaust,”Katharsis 10, 2009, 18 – 45, in Hebrew.
31. Amir Engel, “Reply to Elhanan Yakira and Amit Kravitz,”Katharsis 14, 2010, 144 – 148, in Hebrew.
32. Amir Engel, “Between East and West: Review of Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution: a review of Elena Namli, Jayne Svenungsson, and Alana M. Vincent, eds., Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution,” in State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide, 32 no. 4 (2014): 350 - 353), in Russian.
33. Amir Engel, “Redistribution or Reconstruction?” a Review of Elisabeth Gallas’s: Das Leichenhaus der Bücher; Kulturrestitution und jüdisches Geschichtsdenken nach 1945, in MEDAON - Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung, 8 (2014), 15, 1–6.
34. Amir Engel, “The Dialectic of Modern Hebrew Literature: On Galili Shahar’s new book,” Tabur, 7, 2016, 87 – 89, in Hebrew.
35. Amir Engel “The Three Faces of Gershom Scholem,” Tabur, 7, 2016, 89 – 91, in Hebrew .
36. Amir Engel, “Nazism as a Spiritual Worldview,” These Times, April 2023. https://hazmanhazeh.org.il/metaphysics_of_race/ in Hebrew.
37. Amir Engel, “Community: Critical Examination and Response to Ilany’s “Jussuf and her Brothers”,” Yearbook for European Jewish Literature Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 2024, pp. 233-240
38. Amir Engel and Guy Paz, “To be a European: Judaism and Christianity in the life of Zionist Anthropsph Ersnt Müller, in Tabur: an Online Yearbook for Central European History, Society, and Culture, Koebner Center, Vol, 12, 2024. (Authors share full credit for writing, rewriting, discussing, and doing research for this piece. The names are set in alphabetical order) in Hebrew.
PODCASTS
39. On Gershom Scholem: In Intellectual Biography (U of Chicago Press 2017), The New Books Network, hosted by Max Kaiesr, May 15, 201 https://newbooksnetwork.com/amir- engelgershom-scholem-an-intellectual-biography-u-chicago-press-2017
As a Host on the New Books Network:
40. With Amit Levy on A New Orient From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel,
(Brandeis 2024), Feb 21, 2025, https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-new-orient-2
41. With Nitzan Lebovic on Homo Temporalis: German Jewish Thinkers on Time (Cornel UP 2025),
January 14, 2025, https://newbooksnetwork.com/homo-temporalis
42. With Shaul Magid on Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton UP 2021) August 15, 2024 https://newbooksnetwork.com/shaul-magid- meirkahane-the-public-life-and-political-thought-of-an-american-jewish-radical-princeton-up- 2023
43. With Gilad Sharvit on Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought, (Brandeis UP 2022) July 27, 2024 https://newbooksnetwork.com/dynamic-repetition
44. With Yaniv Feller on The Jewish Imperial Imagination Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought, (Cambridge UP 2023) March 3, 2024 https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-jewish- imperialimagination
45. With Jacob Norberg on The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism (Cambridge UP, 2022), Jan 21, 2024 https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-brothers-grimm- andthe-making-of-german-nationalism
46. With Ofer Ashkenazi on Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of a German Landscape (U Michigan Press, 2020), Jan 9, 2024 https://newbooksnetwork.com/anti-heimat- cinema
CONFERENCES:
1. Amir Engel, “The Aleph: German Jewish discourse of Jewish mysticism,” presented at
the workshop “Between Berlin and Jerusalem,” Stanford University, Stanford. May 5-6, 2009.
2. Amir Engel, “A Flicker in the Stone: Gershom Scholem’s Conception of Exile,” presented at the International Conference of the American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, Cambridge. March, 2009. Nominated for the Horst Frenz Prize for best Graduate Student paper
3. Amir Engel, “Misreading and Mass Murder: Scholem’s attack on the “Wissenschaft des Judentums” as a case study in the use and abuse of the religious past,” presented at the International Conference: “Wissen von Religion,” Erfurt University, Erfurt, September 2010
4. Amir Engel, “Jacob Taubes: The Intellectual and the University,” presented at the International Conference: “Jacob Taubes,” Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, February, 2011
5. Amir Engel, “Gershom Scholem’s Zionism and his Study of Sabbatai Sevi,” presented at the International Conference: “New Research on German and Central European Zionism,” Ben-Gurion University, Be’er Sheva, May, 2011
6. Amir Engel, “On the inability and inescapability of being a German Jew after the Holocaust,” presented at the International Conference: “Damals, Dann und Danach, Barbara Honigmann,” Rosenzweig Center, Jerusalem. October 2011
7. Amir Engel, “Gershom Scholem and the Romantic Symbol,” presented at the workshop “Gershom Scholem in Germany,” Tübingen University, Tübingen, September 2012
8. Amir Engel, “The Vision of Mystical Anarchic Society: Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber,” presented at the workshop: “The Study and Appropriation of Kabbalah in the Modern Period,” Ben-Gurion University, Be’er Sheva. February 2013
9. Amir Engel, “When a dream comes true: Scholem's Zionism and Sabbatai Zevi,” presented at the International Conference: “Gershom Scholem (1897-1982): Life and Work,” University College London, London, June 2013
10. Amir Engel, “This World (and the next one) in Hannah Arendt’s Political Theory,” (in German), presented at the Rhein-Main-Colloquium on “Religion and Politics”, Darmstadt, September 2013
11. Amir Engel, “The German Public as Viewer,” presented at the workshop: “Zuschauen” on the occasion of Prof. Bernhard Greiner’s 70th birthday, Munich, October 2013
12. Amir Engel, “German Culture and Jewish Mysticism: On the German Sources for the Creation of Jewish Mysticism,” presented at the Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Kansas City, September 2014.
13. Amir Engel, “Performing German Jewishness after the Holocaust: Arendt and Celan in Germany,” presented at the international conference: “Undisciplined: German Jewish Studies Today” Leo Baeck Institute London, London, September 2014.
14. Amir Engel, “German Communes and Jewish Mystics,” Departmental Colloquium, Department of Jewish Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University, December 2014.
15. Amir Engel, “Truth Reconsidered: Kafka, Arendt, and Postwar Thinking,” presented at the international workshop “Kafka after Kafka,” the Center for Austrian and German Studies, Ben-Gurion University, March 2015.
16. Amir Engel, “German Jewish Literature in the Shadow of the Catastrophe,” Colloquium of the Rabb Center, Ben-Gurion University, January 2015.
17. Amir Engel, “The New: Jewish Mysticism as a Case Study,” The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, Tel Aviv University, March 2015.
18. Amir Engel, “Germans and Jews 1951. Martin Buber as a pioneer of postwar German Jewish dialogue,” presented at the international conference “Multiple Dialogues: Martin Buber,” The Hebrew University, May 2015.
19. Amir Engel, “Dada and Gerhardt Scholem: die blauweisse Brille,” presented at the international workshop “Praise and Mourning: Poetics and Thought in the Early Writing of Gershom Scholem,” Tel Aviv University, May 2015.
20. Amir Engel, “Scholem’s Sabbateanism” presented at the international workshop “Echos of Shabbetai Svi in Jewish Literatures,” Ulcinj, Montenegro, August 2015.
21. Amir Engel, “Justice in Postwar German Literature,” Presented at the international conference “(Re)Imagining Justice in Contemporary Conflicts, The Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, 16-17 December 2015.
22. Amir Engel, “Dada and Gershom Scholem's Anti-War Rhetoric” Presented at the international conference “Representation and Responses – The Great War and the Jews in Literature,” Sarajevo, October 6 – 8, 2016.
23. Amir Engel, “When dreams come true” Oxford TORCH research network on “Crisis, extremes and Apocalypse,” June 5, 2017.
24. Amir Engel, “On Gershom Scholem’s Intellectual Biography,” Presented at the Department of History, Oxford University, June 6, 2017.
25. Amir Engel, “Between Historiography and Literature: Gershom Scholem’s Intellectual Biography.” Presented at the Seminar of the German Dept. with the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University, October 8, 2017.
26. Amir Engel, “Between Historiography and Literature: Gershom Scholem’s Intellectual Biography.” Presented at the Center for Jewish Studies and the History Dept. University of California Berkeley, October 10, 2017.
27. Amir Engel, “Between Historiography and Literature: Gershom Scholem’s Intellectual Biography.” A discussion with Paul Mendes-Flohr at the Seminary Coop Bookstore, University of Chicago, October 15, 2017.
28. Amir Engel, “Challenges in Writing Intellectual Biography: Two Views by Authors of New Books” with Adi Gordon, presented at the seminar of the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University, October 16, 2017.
29. Amir Engel, “Thinking through Nationalism and Mysticism: The Tangled Intellectual Biographies of Gershom Scholem and Hans Kohn,” Presented at the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Massachusetts, October 17, 2017.
30. Amir Engel, “Sebastianism and Modern Thought.” Presented at the international seminar “Syndromes of the Present”, January 26-28, 2018, Thessaloniki Greece.
31. Amir Engel, “Zur Dialektik des Mythos: Gershom Scholem zwischen Wissenschaft und Kabbalah” Presented at the Katholische Akademie Berlin, May 8, 2018
32. Amir Engel, Barbara Honigmann’s “I” or on the Possibility of Postwar” German Jewish Literature,” presented at the international Tübinger Kolloquium zu Ehren von Bernhard Greiner, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, December 6-7, 2018.
33. Amir Engel “From Separation to Community: The Struggle for Esoteric Politics.” Presented at the international conference “Gustav Landauer, Mysticism, Literature, and Revolution,” Tel Aviv University, May 2, 2019.
34. Amir Engel “Hannah Arendt reads Kafka: A Case Study in the Immediate Postwar.” Presented at the Department of German Studies, University of California Los Angeles, October 2, 2019.
35. Amir Engel “Kafka Reconsidered: Hannah Arendt and the Social Democratic Moment,” Presented at the German Studies Association’s annual conference, Portland OR, 3-6 October 2019.
36. Amir Engel, “Die Lyrik der Kabbala: Gershom Scholem vs. Meir Wiener” (in Hebrew) presented at the book launch for Gershom Scholem’s “Poetica: Schriften zur Literatur,” at the Leo Baeck institute Jerusalem, November 26, 2019.
37. Amir Engel, ““Redemption through Sin:” on the Crossroad between Judaism and Zionism.” Presented at the international conference “The Conspiracy of the Good: On Necessary Evil,” The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, December 16-17, 2019.
38. Amir Engel, “Poetic Thinking in Historical Context” (in Hebrew) presented at Amir Eshel’s Book Launch: Poetic Thinking Today at the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, December 19, 2019.
39. Amir Engel, “Die neue Gemeinschaft: A Case Study,” presented at the international conference “Tradition, Esotericism and Fascism: Then and Now, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” December 29-30, 2019.
40. Amir Engel, “From Redemption to Therapeutics” presented at Gilad Sharvit’s book launch: “Therapeutics and Salvation: Freud and Schelling on Freedom” an online international event organized by the Koebner Institute at The Hebrew University, June 7, 2021.
41. Amir Engel, “Death and New Beginnings: The Case of Carl Einstein’s Expressionist Novel Bebuquin,” Presented at the annual Israeli German Studies Conference, an online event July 5-6, 2021
42. Amir Engel, “The 1951 Goethe Prize to Buber - A Case in the Cultural Politics of Reconciliation” presented at the 12th annual Joseph Carlebach Konferenz titled “Deutschland in Israel – Israel in Deutschland: 1948 bis zur Gegenwart.” an online event, July 6-7, 2021.
43. Amir Engel “Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, and Israeli Rightwing Extremism: A Complicated Relationship,” presented at the German Studies Association’s annual conference, Indianapolis IN (online event), September 30-3, 2021.
44. Amir Engel, “Jewish-Christian Religiosity: The Case the Anthroposophical Kabbalah,” presented at the international conference “Heretical Religiosity and Nihilism” at the Friedrich Nietzsche Haus in Sils Maria Switzerland, October 4-5, 2021.
45. Amir Engel, “Ernst Müller, Martin Buber, and Paul Mendes Flohr,” Presented at the international conference in honor of Paul Mendes Flohr’s eightieth birthday titled, “Is Tikkun Olam still possible?” The Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, November 21-22, 2021.
46. Amir Engel “The Affirmation of Exile in Contemporary German-Jewish Literature,” presented at CoHLIT-21 German Seminar, 2022 at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, March 9-10, 2022.
47. Amir Engel “The Affirmation of Exile in Contemporary German-Jewish Literature” presented at the 10th Conference of the Association for European Jewish Literature Studies, Gesellschaft für europäisch-jüdische Literaturstudien e.V. (EJLS), Jerusalem, 14 June 2022.
48. Amir Engel, “Myth, Judaism, and Nationaliyt- A response” Presented in a panel on “Wissenschaft des Judentums: Myths of the Jewish Nation,” at the Eighteenth world congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August, 2022.
49. Amir Engel, “Between the Hate and the Love of Israel: Arendt in Jerusalem,” presented at The Origins of Totalitarianism” International Conference, Freie Universitaet, Berlin, 19-21 October 2022.
50. Amir Engel, “Expressionism and German Jewish Kabbalah: the Strange case of Meir Wienr’s German Poetry,” Presented at the international Conference “Weltliteratur: Contemporary Readings of a Contested Concept,” Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora, July 10-11, 2023
51. Amir Engel, “German-Jewish-Christian Occultism: Martin Buber and Ernst Mueller,” presented at the twelfth EAJS Congress, Frankfurt am Main, July 16-20, 2023.
52. Amir Engel, “Talmud and Modern Exile,” Talmud Workshop Institute for Jewish Studies Antwerp, 23 – 25 November 2023.
53. Amir Engel, “Löwith, Nietzsche, Sharvit: Book Presentation,” The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora, 17 January, 2024, Berlin.
54. Amir Engel, “Martin Buber’s Jewish-Christian and Universal Spirituality,” Presented at the International Conference Global Weimar/ Global Nahada,” The Divan: House for Arab Culture, Berlin 25 -27 January 2024.
55. Amir Engel, “Hope and Despair in Postwar German Culture,” Presented at the International Conference “Postwar Periods: Spain-German. A Comparative Approach,” Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf 21 -23 February 2024.
56. Amir Engel, “German Jews in Diaspora,“ presented at the annual meeting of the Die AG jüdisch und christlich beim Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchentag, (in German) 26 Feburary, 2024.
57. Amir Engel, “Martin Buber's Universal Spiritualism: Between Martin Luther and Rabbi Nachman,” The German Department, University of Zurich, 27 March, 2024
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Amir Engel, “German Jewish or Jewish German: The Biller-Czollek Debate and
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Question of Israel and the Diaspora,” presents at the International conference “Israel:
German Projections,” (in German) University of Munich, 27-28 May 2024
60. Amir Engel, “Exile, Homecoming and Gershom Scholem: A Case Study,” Presented in the International Conference Between State and Exile: Rethinking Jewish Politics, Berlin, The Catholic Academy, 23-26 June 2024
61. Amir Engel, “Postwar Buber: the Politics of Loving God” Presented in the International conference Desiring God: The Erotic and the Divine in 20th-Century Thought, KU Leuven, 10-12 September, 2024.
62. Amir Engel, “On Philosophical and Political Arguments” Presented in the International conference, Talmud and Contemporary Thought, University of Antwerp, 12-15 September, 2024.
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Gilly Eran
MA Fellow
Research interests: Visual History, German Nationalism, German Colonialism, Art History, Material History.
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Gilly Eran is interested in visual and material aspects of German nationalism and their contribution to the construction of German nationalist narratives. She is a graduate of the Hebrew University with a major in History and Art History, and a fellow of the MA HONORS PROGRAM 2022/23 of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies at the Humanities of the Hebrew University.
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Nadan Feldman
Ph.D. Fellow
Academic Interests: Modern German and American History; Big Business and Fascism; Nazi Germany and American Tycoons; Business History of American and German Elites; Capitalism and Politics in Western Democracies; Mass Media and right wing populism.
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Nadan Feldman is a Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research deals with the ties between Nazi Germany and American Corporations from the rise of Hitler to the end of WWII, and focuses on the ideological-political stands of American Tycoons, CEOs and other senior figures in a group of powerful, influancial US corporations. Prior to the dissertation Mr. Feldman published an M.A thesis in this subject in 2018, which had received three academic awards.
Since 2019 Feldman is the Editor of Tabur - Yearbook for European History, Society, Culture and Thought, published by The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History. Under his hands as editor were published Volume 10: 80 years to the breaking of WWII; and Volume 11: The Angela Merkel Era. These Volumes were the first to be published in a digital version.
Higher Education
PhD in History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem - in the field of American-German relations throughout the Nazi Period
M.A in German Studies and Urban Planning, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
B.A in Political Science and Business Management, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Awards
2020: Award for Outstanding M.A thesis from the International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University
2020: Award for Outstanding M.A thesis from the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum
2019: Award for Outstanding M.A thesis paper from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry Research at the Hebrew University
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Alumah Florsheim-Dor
PH.D Fellow
Academic Interests: Cultural and social history, artistic and philosophical approaches to photography, the GDR in its late period, intelligence agencies in the cold war, everyday life history, urban theory.
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Alumah Florsheim-Dor is a Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research is on the Stasi Photographers who operated in the cities of the GDR during the 70’s and 80’s of the 20th century. She studies Stasi photographs, held in the BStU archives, and uses them to ask questions about everyday life and culture of the bureaucracy class of the GDR.
In addition, Alumah works as a research assistant in the context of an international commission of historians and the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, which was established by Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior and Community. The commission works together to “examine and reappraise the attack on the Israeli Olympic team of 5 September 1972, during the Olympic Games in Munich, including its background and aftermath”. Together with Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi Alumah collects and analyses relevant material and documentation in Israel to be published in the closing report of the commission.
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Tamar Kojman
Research Fellow (PostDoc)
Academic Interests: Modern German and European history, national character, gender and national stereotypes, secularization, religious history
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Tamar Kojman is a post-doctoral researcher at the DGF project “Between Aliyah and Escape. Jewish Youth Movement and Zionist Education under the Nazi Regime and in pre-State Israel 1933-1945,” a collaboration between the Koebner Minerva Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institut für Erziehungswissenschaften at the Technical University of Braunschweig. She has recently completed her PhD dissertation, From Kultus to Kultur: Debating the Germans’ Mission in the World, 1830–1880, at the Hebrew University.
Tamar was a recipient of the Minerva Fellowship, the Armbruster Fellowship, the President Scholarship for Humanities, and the Mandel Scholion PhD fellowship.
Publications:
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
- Kojman, Tamar. “An Awkward Predicament: ‘The German Man’ and Feminized Modernity in the 1840s.” Central European History 57, 1 (March 2024): 1–24.
- Kojman, Tamar. “Germanness and Religious Universalism in the Aftermath of the 1844 Trier Pilgrimage.” Nations and Nationalism 27, 4 (October 2021).
Book Chapters:
- Kojman, Tamar. “Between Religion and Politics: Constructing an Apolitical Sphere after the 1848–49 German Revolutions.” In Depoliticisation before Neoliberalism. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political in Modern Europe, edited by Adriejan van Veen and Theo Jung (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
- Kojman, Tamar. “‘How Do You Know German?’ Elderly Interviewees’ Impression of the Interviewer and its Effect on Narrative Construction.” [In Hebrew.] In “I Still Have More to Say,” Theory and Practice in Oral History, edited by Sharon Livne and Sharon Kangisser (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2021).
Miscellaneous:
- “The Persistent Ambivalence of German Nationalism,” review of Die Deutschen und Ihre Nation: Geschichte einer Idee, by Andreas Fahrmeir. [In Hebrew.], in: Tabur – Yearbook for European History, Society, Culture and Thought 10 (2020).
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Dr. Hilla Lavie
Research Fellow (Post Doc)
Academic interests: modern German cultural history, film studies and film history, German-Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, queer history, environmental history
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Hilla Lavie is a post doc fellow at the History Department/Koebner Center of the Hebrew University. Her current research focuses on German-Jewish history and queer history. She earned her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2020; her dissertation, which is currently transformed into a book manuscript, focuses on representations of Israel in 1950s-1960s West German Films. The dissertation received the Simon Wiesenthal Prize for Holocaust Studies. She was a guest scholar at the Leibnitz Institute for Jewish history and culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig, and at the Friedrich Meinecke Institut at the Free University Berlin with the support of the Armbruster fund. Hilla graduated in Film Studies at Tel Aviv University and holds an MFA (film directing) and MA (film studies); her MA thesis won the Goldhirsh prize for Holocaust Studies. Her latest research on the perception of nature among German-Jews during the Nazi era as reflected in the German-Jewish press, was supported by the International Institute for Holocaust Research Yad Vashem and will be published by Yad Vashem Publications. In the last few years Hilla teaches courses on film and history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Select Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“A Witness for the Prosecution: An Israeli Filmmaker's Reflections on Adenauer's New Germany”, German Studies Review, 2022
“From Kapò to The Battle of Algiers: Gillo Pontecorvo and the Postwar Italian Left”, Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein: Europa nach dem Holocaust, 2022
Being a Jewish Lesbian in Berlin: Belonging and Solidarity during the Weimar Era and the Third Reich”, Queer Jewish Lives between Central Europe and Mandatory Palestine, 2021
"A Critical Look at the Beloved Land: Two West-German Documentary Films Made by Israelis in the 1960s and 1970s", Leo Baeck Institute Year book, 2018.
"An Ambivalent Relationship: Representations of Germany and Germans in Israeli Cinema, 1950–1990", Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 2015
"On the Nazi Image in the Israeli Cinema: a Historiographical Dialogue between the Israeli Cinema and the Israeli Holocaust Research", Slil - Journal for History, cinema and Television, 2014
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Dr. Amit Levy
Research Fellow (PostDoc)
Academic interests: History of knowledge; migration studies; transnational encounters; modern European history; Jewish Studies; Middle Eastern Studies; Israel Studies; Colonial Studies; Arab-Jewish relations.
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Amit Levy is a research fellow at the Koebner Center’s project “In Europe, In Transit: Daily Life of German-Jewish Refugees in Europe, 1933-1939”, where he studies German-Jewish private photography in the context of migration, transit and knowledge production after 1933. He completed his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2021) and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Haifa and the Open University of Israel.
Amit’s award-winning book, A New Orient (2024), explores the history of Zionist Oriental Studies as migrating knowledge from German universities, and the discipline’s role in shaping Arab-Jewish relations in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. The book was published in Hebrew by Magnes Press/Koebner-Minerva Center; an updated English version will be published in December by Brandeis University Press, with the support of the Israel Science Foundation.
He also serves as the Managing Editor of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center’s Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, published by De Gruyter.
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
- A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2024) (forthcoming. Revised and updated English edition)
- A New Orient: From German Orientalism to Israeli Mizrahanut (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2024) (Hebrew).
PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
- “’Send my regards to those working on the al-Balādhurī manuscript’: The Study of Arabic and Islam in Interwar Jerusalem as Intellectual Common Ground,” in Rachel Mairs, Sarah Irving, Karene Sanchez and Lucia Admiraal (eds.), Colonial Vocabularies: Teaching and Learning Arabic in Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024; forthcoming).
- “Visualizing Farewell: A Jewish Soldier’s Return to Postwar Germany through Private Photography,” Jewish Culture and History 25, no. 2 (2024): 233–254.
- (co-authored with Hanan Harif) “‘A Complete, Multifaceted Discipline’: The Debate over the History of Jews in Muslim Lands and its Teaching,” in: Uzi Rebhun and Yfaat Weiss (eds.), The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Nation State and Higher Education (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2024), pp. 687–718 (Hebrew).
- “Rediscovering the Goldziher Legacy in Jerusalem: Religion, Language, and History in the Making of a Hebrew University,” in: Hans-Jürgen Becker, Kinga Dévényi, Sebastian Günther and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Building Bridges: Ignaz Goldziher and His Correspondents. Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Islamic History and Civilization, Vol. 212 (Leiden: Brill, 2024), pp. 139–164.
- “Conflicting German Orientalism: Zionist Arabists and Arab Scholars, 1926–1938,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 5 (2023): 1112–1131.
- “The Archive as Storyteller: Refractions of German-Jewish Oriental Studies Migration in Personal Archives,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts/Dubnow Institute Yearbook XVII (2018): 425–446.
- “A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient,” Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 10, no. 1 (2016): 79–100.
- “'The Sheik': Understanding American Orientalism through Visual and Narrative Differences in Three Decades of Discussion,” Slil: Online Journal for History, Film and Television 10 (2016): 39–57 (Hebrew).
- “‘Ma’alesh, Nistader’: Arabic in the Folklore of the Palmach during the 1940s,” Hayo Haya: Student History Journal 11 (2015): 46–66 (Hebrew).
ARTICLES IN ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
- “A Discipline in a Suitcase: The Scientific Nachlass of Josef Horovitz,” in Elisabeth Gallas, Anna Holzer-Kawalko, Caroline Jessen and Yfaat Weiss (eds.), Contested Heritage: Jewish Cultural Property after 1945, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), pp. 117–127.
- “Der wissenschaftliche Nachlass von Josef Horovitz,” in: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Archives of German–Jewish Scholarship: Wissenstransfer und Staatsbildung im Mandatsgebiet Palästina und in Israel (2018) (limited copies).
- “Israel. Orientalist Collections at the National Library of Israel,” Geschichte der Germanistik 49/50 (2016): 147–148.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES IN CATALOGS, MAGAZINES AND BLOGS
- “German Heritage in Word Cards: The Concordance of Classical Arabic Poetry in Jerusalem”, Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut.
- “Envisioning a Hebrew University: Ignác Goldziher on the University in Jerusalem”, Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut.
- (co-authored with Tom Eshed) “Elyakim Gotthold Weil”, Ad Acta: The Hebrew University, Jewish Scholars, and the Exile from Europe (Exhibition pamphlet). The National Library of Israel, November–March 2018–2019.
- “‘There is a need for a native quality of Arabic speaker’: Isaac Shamosh, the First Oriental Lecturer in the School of Oriental Studies, 1936-1937”, The Historical Archive of the Hebrew University Blog, Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center Website.
BOOK REVIEWS
- Eyal Clyne, Orientalism, Zionism and Academic Practice: Middle East and Islam Studies in Israeli Universities (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), in The New East 59 (2020): 207–210 (Hebrew).
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Dr. Lukas Meissel
Associated Research Fellow (Post Doc)
Academic interests: Holocaust and Genocide studies/education, visual history, US-Israeli-Austrian relations, and antisemitism.
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Lukas Meissel is a historian and post doc research fellow at The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a post-doctoral grant from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris. His post-doc project is called “Photographic Testimonies. An Integrated Visual History of Survival and Resistance”. He wrote his PhD thesis about SS photography in concentration camps at the University of Haifa, Israel, and earned BA and MA degrees in history and contemporary history at the University of Vienna, Austria.
Prior to his studies in Israel, he worked as an archivist in the Jewish Community of Vienna and in various Holocaust studies and education projects. He received fellowships and grants in Israel, the USA, Germany, Austria and France, as well as the Herbert-Steiner-Anerkennungspreis 2015 and the Theodor-Körner-Preis 2021 awards. His research, lectures and teaching focus on Holocaust and Genocide studies/education, visual history, US-Israeli-Austrian relations, and antisemitism. He has published articles in international peer-reviewed journals, an award-winning monograph about perpetrator photography in the Mauthausen concentration camp and edited volumes about Holocaust studies and education.
Selected publications:
Monographs
PhD thesis (publication in preparation)
Beyond the Perpetrators’ Gaze. An Integrated Visual History of Nazi Concentration Camps, p. 401.
Mauthausen im Bild. Fotografien der Lager-SS. Entstehung – Motive – Deutungen (Vienna: edition Mauthausen, 2019), p. 132.
[Mauthausen in Images. Photographs of the Camp-SS. Origin - Motives – Interpretations]
Peer-reviewed articles
Capturing Bolshevism: SS Photographs of Soviet POWs at Concentration Camps. A Case Study, in: S:I.M.O.N. SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION, vol. 9/2022/No.1, 58-70.
The Innocent Perpetrators: The Portrayal of ‘German Victimhood’ in: Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter (Generation War) (2013), in: The Journal of Holocaust Research, formerly Dapim, 36:2-3, 2022, 146-163.
Igraszki z symboliką Zagłady. Seria gier komputerowych „Wolfenstein” jako studium przypadku cyfrowych reprezentacji Zagłady, in: Studia i Materialy / Holocaust Studies and Materials vol 17, 2021, 329-357 (with Johannes Breit)
[Playing with Holocaust symbols. The video game franchise Wolfenstein as a case study for digital Holocaust representations.]
The Visual Memory of Mauthausen, in: Contemporary Austrian Studies, vol. 30/2021, A Visual History of Austria (Günter Bischof, ed., Martin Kofler, Hans Petschar, guest ed.), 161-181.
Not “How Was It Possible,” but “Who Made It Possible”: The Topic of Perpetrators in Holocaust Education in Austria, in: Wendy Lower, Lauren Faulkner Rossi (ed.), Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust XII. New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 406-428.
Peer-reviewed journal volume
zeitgeschichte, volume 49, issue 2 (2022), Fotoalben als Quellen der Zeitgeschichte (ed. with Vida Bakondy, Eva Tropper, Adina Seeger),
therein: SS-Fotoalben als visuelle Leistungsnachweise und Legitimationsberichte, 185-207.
[Volume: Photo Albums as Historical Sources in Contemporary History, article: SS photo albums as visual performance records and legitimizing reports]
Edited volumes
Aufregende Forschung. Zeitgeschichtliche Interventionen von Hans Safrian (Vienna: new academic press, 2022) (with Jutta Fuchshuber).
[Unsettling Research. Contemporary Historical Interventions by Hans Safrian]
Orientierungen, Irritationen. Studienfahrten an Erinnerungsorte der NS-Verbrechen (Vienna: LIT, 2021) (ed. by Verein GEDENKDIENST with Till Hilmar, Olivia Kaiser, Lena Krainz, Laurin Neidhart and Magdalena Rest).
[Orientations, Irritations. Study Trips to Places of Remembrance for National Socialist Crimes]
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Gal NIr
MA Fellow
Research Interests: Women’s Writing, Gender Studies, Post-WWII German and French History
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Gal completed her bachelor’s degree in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she is now an MA student in the Department of History and an MA Fellow at the Koebner Minerva Center. Her MA thesis, supervised by Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi and Prof. Moshe Sluhovsky focuses on women’s writing about contraception in Germany and France after World War II, exploring how social, legal, and cultural frameworks influenced women’s narratives on this topic. Gal’s research also examines the broader impact of postwar societal shifts on women’s agency and self-expression.
Gal also coordinates content for the online journals Tabur and Salil, overseeing updates and working closely with the editor-in-chief to maintain and expand the journals’ academic reach.
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