check
People | The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History

People

ofer

Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi

Director and permanent academic member

Ofer Ashkenazi is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Read More
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, modern visual culture, and Jewish experience in twentieth-century Europe. He is the author of three monographs: "A Walk into the Night: Reason and Subjectivity in Weimar Film (2010); "Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity" (2012) and "Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape, 1918-1968" (scheduled for summer 2020). He published articles on various topics, including German-Jewish immigration to Palestine, exile photography, and the German peace movement. His current research project examines Jewish photography in modern Germany.

 

Selected Publications

 

Books

Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (University of Michigan Press, 2020)

Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity (Palgrave-McMillan, 2012)

Reviews of the Book:

German Studies Review – download in PDF format

German History – download in PDF format

H-Net Discussion Network – download in PDF format

H-Soz-u-Kult – download in PDF format

Jewish Film and New Media – download in PDF format

A Walk into the Night: Reason and Subjectivity in the Films of the Weimar Republic (Am Oved, Hebrew, 2010).

Reviews of the Book:

Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte – download in PDF format

Haaretz – download in PDF format

Haaretz, “Before the Collapse” – download in PDF format

 

Edited Volumes

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).

Ofer Ashkenazi, Udi Greenberg, Noah Strot (eds.), “From Weimar to the Cold War,” special issue of New German Critique (November 2015)

Ofer Ashkenazi, David Bargal, Eran Rolnik (eds.), Einstein, Freud and the Wars to Come: Why War? in Context (Carmel, 2018 [Hebrew])

 

Articles

Ofer Ashkenazi, “A Jewish Memory of a German Past: Jewish Amateur Photography in Nazi Germany,” Zion 82.2 (Dall 2020), 263-294

Ofer Ashkenazi, Guy Miron, “Jewish Vacations in Nazi Germany: Reflections on Time and Space amid an Unlikely Respite,” Jewish Quarterly Review 110.3 (Summer 2020): 523-552.

Ofer Ashkenazi, Jakob F. Dittmar, “Belonging in Auto/Biographical Comics: Narratives of Exile in the German Heimat,” A/B: Auto / Biography Studies ( 2020)

Ofer Ashkenazi, “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Nakba and the Heritage of the Israeli Historians’ Debate,” (review essay) Zeithistorische Forschungen 16.3 (2019), 549-563.

Ofer Ashkenazi, “Detoxification: Nazi Remakes of E.A. Dupont’s Films,” in Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein (eds.), Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Film (Berghahn, 2020).

“Exile at Home: Jewish Amateur Photography under Nazism, 1933-1939,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (November 2019)

"Transnational Antiwar Activity in the Third Reich: The Nazi Branch of the New Commonwealth Society," German History 36.2 (June 2018): 207-228

“Strategies of Exile Photography: Hans Casparius and Helmar Lerski in Palestine,” in Marc Silberman (ed.), Back to the Future: Traditions and Innovations in German Studies (Bern: Peter Lang, 2018), 87-119.

"1932 as a Watershed in Einstein Political activity," Ofer Ashkenazi, David Bargal, Eran Rolnik (eds.), Einstein, Freud and the Wars to Come: Why War? in Context (Carmel, 2018 [Hebrew])

"Improbable Twins: The Bifurcating Heritage of Weimar Culture in Helmar Lerski and Walter Frentz’s Kulturfilms," German Studies Review 40.3 (2017): 527-548

“The Non-Heimat Heimat: Landscapes and Identity in German-Jewish Films, from Weimar to the Cold War,” New German Critique (November 2015), 115-144

“The Jewish Place of Weimar Cinema: A Reconsideration of Karl Grune’s The Street,” in Steven Aschheim and Vivial Liska (eds.), The German-Jewish Experience: Contested Interpretations and Conflicting Perceptions (De Gruyter, 2015), 135-154

“The Symphony of a Great Heimat: Helmar Lerski’s Propaganda Film Avodah,” A Three-Way Street: Transnational German-Jewish Culture, Leslie Morris and Jay Geller (ed.), (University of Michigan Press, 2015), 91-121

"Jewish Displacement and Simulation in the German Films of E. A. Dupont," Simone Lässing and Miriam Ruerupp (eds.), Space and Spatiality in German-Jewish History (Berghahn, 2017), 88-106

"Place and Displacement in the New Israeli Documentary Film," Jewish Culture and History 15:3 (Fall, 2014): 212-233

“The Future of History as Film,” Rethinking History (Fall 2013)

“Biramschule in Context: The “German” Influence on Jewish Body-Culture in Mandate Palestine,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte (2013): 17-39

“Zionism and Violence in Albert Einstein’s Worldview,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 62.2: (Fall 2012): 331-355

“German-Jewish Athletes and the Formation of Zionist (Trans-)National Culture,” Jewish Social Studies 17.3: (Spring/Summer 2012): 124-155

“Home-Coming as a National Founding Myth: Jewish Identity and East German Landscapes in Konrad Wolf’s I was Nineteen,” Religions 3 (Spring 2012): 130-150

“Re-framing the Interwar Peace Movement: The Curious Case of Albert Einstein,” Journal of Contemporary History 46:4 (Spring 2012): 741-766

“Ridiculous Trauma: Comic Representations of the Nazi Past in Contemporary German Visual Culture,” Cultural Critique 78 (Fall 2011): 88-118

“‘A New Era of Peace and Understanding’: The Integration of Sound-Film into German Popular Cinema, 1929-1932,” in Christian Rogowski (ed.). The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema, (Camden House, 2010), 249-267

“Middle-Class Heroes: Anti-Nationalism in the Popular Adventure Films of the Weimar Republic” in John A. Williams (ed.), Weimar Culture Revisited (Palgrave, 2010), 73-98

The Incredible Transformation of Dr. Bessel: Alternative Memories of the Great War in German War Films of the late 1920s,” History and Memory, (Spring/Summer, 2008), 20(1): 121-153

Prisoners’ Fantasies: The Longing for Law and Order in Weimar Film,” Journal of European Studies, (Fall 2009), 39(3): 290-304.

“‘A Zionist, not a National Jew’: Albert Einstein and Brit-Shalom,” Brit-Shalom and Bi-National Zionism: The ‘Arab Problem’ as a Jewish Problem, Adi Gordon (ed.), (Tel Aviv: Carmel, 2008), 123-148

“Beyond Stereotypes and Assimilation: The ‘Jewish-Comedy’ of the Weimar Republic,” Zion 73:3 (2007): 301-323

 

 

Photo credit: Esther Lassman

Read Less
Micha Danziger

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.    

Read More

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
2015 – 2018        M.A – Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Fall      2016        Exchange Philosophy Master Program, University of Toronto, Canada         
2011 – 2020        Yeshiva Student, Ohr Torah Stone, “Machanayim” – Kollel Rabbinical School                       
2011 – 2014        B.A - Philosophy Major, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2002 – 2006        High School Diploma, Ohr Torah Stone, Derech Avot, Efrat

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
2020 – Present TA to Prof. Arnold Davidson in courses: "Comparative Existentialisms: From Sartre to  
                        Soloveitchik" “The Philosophy Modern Orthodox Judaism”, “Literature of Shoah, Philosophy in Shoah" 
2017 – 2019    TA to Prof. Meir Buzaglo in course "Introduction to Analytical Philosophy"
2018 - 2019     TA to Prof. Arnold Davidson in course “Michel Foucault: Power and Self”
2016                TA to Prof. Elchanan Yakira in Course "Spinoza & Liebniz"
2015 – 2016     Archivist for Spielberg Jewish Film Archive Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
2022 – Present   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
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  

Honors and Awards
2022 – 2025       Presidential Endowment Scholarship for Excellence          
2022                   Yad Vashem Doctoral Studies Research Grant
2021 – 2023       The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History PhD Fellowship
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  

Read Less
lorena

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.
picture aya elyada

Dr. Aya Elyada

Permanent academic member
Humanities Building, Room 6507

Senior Lecturer at the History Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Read More
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 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 main fields of interest are German and German-Jewish history and culture; Christian-Jewish relations; Yiddish language and literature; the history of the Yiddish-German encounter; and the social and cultural history of language and translation. My current project explores the place of Old Yiddish literature in modern German and German-Jewish culture.

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
Oct’ 2020-present    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-            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)

2022    Submission of a research proposal to the DFG Stiftung (together 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” (under review)

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
2013-2017    Research Grant of the Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
2013-2017    Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG)

Honors and Awards (recent years)
2017                Rector's list of excellence in teaching, 2015-16
2016                Rector's list of excellence in teaching, 2014-15

Selected Publications
Books

Contested Heritage: Old Yiddish Texts in German-Jewish Culture (1800-1938) (work title, in preparation)

A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.
Reviews: 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

  • 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

  • “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:

Arseniy Agroskin, 2022–: The Reception of Sefer Nizzahon among Early Modern Christian and Jewish Readers (Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; joint supervision with Prof. Israel Yuval).

Bilha Shilo, 2018–: Biography of a Generation: Student Admissions Requests to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1939 (Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joint supervision with Prof. Yfaat Weiss).

Daniel Lehmann, 2018-: Representations of the Reformation in the Protestant-Jewish Polemic: Intra-Christian Conflict in the "Presence" of Jews (Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; joint supervision with Prof. Ram Ben-Shalom).
 
Past Students:

Meirav Reuveni, 2017-2022Polemics on the Hebrew Language in the Tri-Lingual Jewish Press in Central and Eastern Europe 1856-1914 (Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; joint supervision with Prof. Richi Cohen).
Amit Levy, 2016-2021The 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, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 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, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 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, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 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, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 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, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 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

 

Read Less
Amir Engel

Dr. Amir Engel

Affiliated academic member

Received his PhD from Stanford University in 2011

Read More
. His first book, an intellectual biography of the renowned Kabbalah Jewish German and Israeli scholar Gershom Scholem, is scheduled for publication with university of Chicago Press. Currently he is a research fellow at the Martin Buber Professur für Jüdische Religionsphilosophie, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. His current project seeks entails a survey of postwar German-Jewish literature.

Gershom Scholem: an Intellectual Biography, Chicago University press, Forthcoming.
Renewal in the Shadow of the Catastrophe: Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan in Germany, German Studies Review, Forthcoming

Jacob Taubes, From Cult to Culture. Eds. Amir Engel and Charlotte Fonrobert, Stanford University Press, 2010, 445 pp.
“Gershom Scholem’s ‘Kabbalah and Myth’ Beyond German Jewish Romanticism,” (in German), Gershom Scholem in Deutschland: Zwischen Seelenverwandtschaft und Sprachlosigkeit, Eds. Matthias Morgenstern and Gerold Necker, Mohr Siebeck, (in press).
“Above the Abyss and Away: Barbara Honigmann, Gershom Scholem and German Jewish Culture after the Holocaust,” (in German), Weimarer Beiträge, (in press).
“Reading Gershom Scholem in Context: Salomon Maimon’s and Gershom Scholem’s German Jewish Discourse on Jewish Mysticism,” New German Critique, 121, Winter 2014.

Read Less
Gilly Eran

Gilly Eran

MA Fellow

Research interests: Visual History, German Nationalism, German Colonialism, Art History, Material History.

Read More
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.

 

 
 

 

Read Less
Farack

Bettina Farack, MA

Visiting Research Fellow (PhD)

Academic Interests: Library history, collection theory and provenance research.

Read More

Bettina Farack is a PhD candidate at the University of Erfurt. Her research focuses on the history of the library of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem and is part of the project “German-Jewish Heritage Relocated: Postwar Dispersion of the Library of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums”, a joint research project of Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem and Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig.


Bettina Farack has studied library and information science, philosophy and Protestant theology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. From 2019 to 2022, she managed the library and the archive of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem. Her research focuses on library history, collection theory and provenance research.
 

Recent Publications

  •     „Die Bibliothek von Leo Baeck: Raub und Rekonstruktion“,  (Berliner Handreichungen zur Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft Heft 485, Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Berlin 2022.
  •     “Die Träume der Arbeitssklaven: Zwangsarbeit für die ‚Judenbibliothek‘ des Reichssicherheitshauptamts“, in Trumah: Zeitschrift der Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg 25 (2023): forthcoming.
Read Less
Nadan Feldman

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.

Read More

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

 

Read Less
Mor Geller (new)

Mor Geller

PhD Fellow

Academic Interests: cultural history, Alltagsgeschichte, urban history; the (Cultural) Cold War; GDR and the Soviet Bloc; media, popular culture, consumerism; film history and theory; audience and reception studies; Marxism and socialism.

Read More
 
Higher Education
2019–    Graduate Student, Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) — MA thesis on film audience research in East Germany in the 1970s-80s (advisor: Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi)
2016–2019        BA, History and History Honors Program, HUJI

Honors, Awards, and Affiliations
2020    Research grant for MA thesis project, DAAD Center for German Studies at the European Forum at HUJI
2020    Scholarship for student exchange at the University of Chicago for the 2021 spring quarter (awarded by HUJI Faculty of Humanities, declined due to Covid-19)
2019/21    Fellow, MA Honors Program, Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, HUJI
2019         Rector’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship, HUJI
2019        Dean of Humanities’ Award for Excellence in Scholarship, HUJI
2018–        Fellow, Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, HUJI
2018, 2020    German Language intensive summer course, University of Vienna (scholarship awarded by HUJI’s Center for Austrian Studies)
2018    George L. Mosse Award for outstanding seminar paper (“Wie Wunderbar, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Communism”, about East German 1968 film Heißer Sommer)
2018–2020        Dean’s List, Faculty of Humanities, HUJI
2017–        Department of History Honors Program
2016    Excellence Admission Grant, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Academic experience
2019–    Chief editor, Hayo Haya – a Young Forum for History (HUJI peer-reviewed journal for undergraduate and graduate students in historical fields)
2019/20    Research assistant for Prof. Ulrike Pilarczyk (Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany) – Hebrew/English translation for project about Zionist youth movements in Germany and Palestine
2018–    Editing in English and Hebrew for Prof. Israel J. Yuval (HUJI)
2016–2019         Board member, Hayo Haya

Teaching at History Dept., HUJI
2019/21    Methodological Training (39100), instructor
2020/21    Introduction to 20th Century History (39215), TA
2019/21    Europe in the Early modern Era (39204), TA
2019/20    Introduction to the Middle Ages (39140), TA
2019/20    Documentary Film and Historical Reality (39236), TA
2019/20    Between Perpetrator and Victim: Israeli and Palestinian Intifada Cinema (8238), TA (Amirim Undergraduate Humanities Honors Program)

Publications
"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Socialism: Education and Entertainment in the Musical Film Heißer Sommer (GDR, 1968)." Slil – Online Journal for History, Film, and Television, approx. 25 p. (forthcoming) [IN HEBREW]

Conferences and Workshops
2021    10th Biennial DEFA Summer Film Institute: Authority and Alterity in East German Movies: Political Experiments, Rebel Youth, and Civil Unrest, June 13-20, 2021, UMass Amherst
2020    The GSA 44th Annual Conference, September 30-October 4, 2020, Washington, D.C. (Zoom), "Socialist Subjectivities: Rethinking East Germany under Honecker" seminar participant. Presentation title: "Surveyed Screens: Audience research as ground for negotiation in late East Germany."
2020    The 14th Annual Workshop for Young Scholars in German History and Culture, Bar-Ilan University, February 10, 2020 (member of organizing committee and panel moderator)

 

 

Read Less
rebekka

Dr. Rebekka Grossmann

Associated Research Fellow (Post Doc)

Academic Interests: Jewish Cultural and Political History, Migration, Israel & Palestine, German & European History, Photo History

Read More
Current Project:

 Post Doc Research: Moving Worlds: Jewish Humanitarian Activism beyond the Imperial Age, 1930-1970

Education
Ph.D         Hebrew University, History, 2014-2020
                 Committee: Ofer Ashkenazi (chair), Moshe Zimmermann, Eli Lederhendler, Amos Morris-Reich
                University of Wisconsin-Madison, George L. Mosse Program in History Fellow, 2015-2016
M.Phil     University of Oxford, Modern Jewish Studies, 2013, MA-Advisors: David Rechter, Derek Penslar    
B.A.         University of Freiburg, Contemporary History, 2011
                University of Haifa, DAAD Exchange Program, 2011    

Book Manuscript (based on dissertation): The Unsettled Gaze: Photography, Mobility and Nation in Mandate Palestine

PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Forthcoming    “The Aesthetic of Encounter. Photography’s Visions of Statehood in Mandate Palestine”, Israel Studies.
2019                “Image Transfer and Visual Friction. Staging Palestine in the National Socialist Spectacle”, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 2019, 19-45.
2018                 “Negotiating Presences. Palestine and the Weimar German Gaze“, Jewish Social Studies 23.2 (2018), 137-172.
Peer-Reviewed Articles in Volumes & Anthologies
Forthcoming    “South-East of Berlin. A German-Jewish Photojournalist in India”, Skye Doney & Sunny Yudkoff (eds), Mosse’s Europe: New Perspectives in the History of German
           Jews, Fascism and Sexuality.
Encyclopedia Entries
2020    “Alice Schalek”, Luce Lebart, Marie Robert (eds), World History of Women Photographers.
2018    “Mother Borchardt” – a Jewish Shipping Company Owner (in German and English). Key Documents of German-Jewish History. A Digital Source Edition. Institut für die       Geschichte der Deutschen Juden (IDGJ), Hamburg. Jewish-History-Online.net.
2017    “The Henry Jones Lodge. Jewish Self-confidence and the Path into the Modern Age” (in German and English). Key Documents of German-Jewish History. A Digital Source        Edition. Institut für die Geschichte der Deutschen Juden (IDGJ), Hamburg. Jewish-History-Online.net.
Book Reviews
2010    Grossmann, Rebekka, Schröter, Karl Martin, Review on Sari Nusseibeh: Once Upon a Country. A Palestinian Life. New York 2007, (in German), Liberal. Vierteljahrshefte für Politik und Kultur 3 (2010), 84-86.
2011    Review on Fanny Englard: Vom Waisenhaus zum Jungfernhof. Deportiert von Hamburg nach Riga: Bericht einer Überlebenden. Gine Elsner (ed.), Hamburg, VSA: 2009 (in   German), Yakinton. Journal of the Association of Israelis of Central European Origin.
Online Publications
Forthcoming    “Displacement in Stills: German-Jewish Photographers on the Move”, Sheer Ganor, Rebekka Grossmann, https://migrantknowledge.org/, Research Blog of the GHI     Washington and the GHI Pacific Regional Office in Berkeley.
Manuscripts in Preparation
Book manuscript, “The Unsettled Gaze: Photography, Mobility and Nation in German-Jewish Migratory History”.
Book manuscript, Ofer Ashkenazi, Rebekka Grossmann, Shira Miron, Sarah Segev: “Still Lives. Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany”.
Peer-Reviewed Articles in Preparation
“Following Jewish Explorers into the Unknown: Knowledge and Movement in German-Jewish Travel Photography”, Ofer Ashkenazi and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan (eds), Rethinking Modern Jewish History and Memory through Photography.
“Eye Contact: Jewish Cameras in the Nazi German Street”.
“The Currency of the Cameratic: Photographs in International Rescue Campaigns during World War II”.
Outreach
2013    “‘How will I hate?’ Israeli Intellectuals and the German Problem”. Wadham College Journal (Michaelmas Term), 16-20.

AWARDS, GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS 
2020-2021    Postdoctoral Fellow, Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History
2020             Salo Baron New Voices in Jewish Studies Award, Columbia University and Fordham University
2020              AJS Professional Development Grant for young scholars
2019- 2020    Binational Visiting Fellow in the History of Migration at GHI West, University of California, Berkeley
2017-2018    Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme, Leo Baeck Institute, London & Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
2014- 2019    George L. Mosse Program in History, University of Wisconsin-Madison & The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Hebrew            University, Jerusalem
2018    Conference Travel Grant of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS)
2017    Leo Baeck Institute Dissertation Prize, Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem
2016    Conference Travel Grant of the Hebrew University
2016    Yad Vashem Dissertation Prize, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
2016    “Chavruta” Research Initiative Award, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2012    Research Grant, Wadham College, University of Oxford    
2012    Research Grant, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
2011-2013    M.A. Scholarship, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
2011-2013     M.A. Scholarship, Cusanuswerk Foundation
2011    Language and Research Fellowship in Haifa, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

EMPLOYMENT
2016- 2020    Research Associate, “Still Lives. Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany”, ISF & GIF-Funded Project headed by Ofer Ashkenzi
2018             Instructor, Department of History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2016               Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2014- 2015    Research Associate, Daat HaMakom Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in Jewish Modernity, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2014-2015    Research Assistant, Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2011-2012    Research Assistant, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
2010-2011    Research Assistant, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS)

INVITED TALKS
2021        “On Turning Local Sites into Global Sights: When Zionist Politics Met  Photography”, Columbia University, January 19.
2018       “Mandated Aesthetics? The Photographic Economy of Interwar Palestine,” Modern German History Colloquium, Cologne University, December 10.
2016       “Political Landscape. Eretz Israel in Nazi Photography” (in Hebrew), Yad Vashem, the Annual Scholarship Ceremony, Jerusalem, June 27.
2016       “Camera Politica: Palestine in Nazi German Photojournalism,” Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 14.

PUBLIC TALKS
2020    „Jüdische Positionierungen. Zionismus und Fotografie in der Weimarer Republik zwischen Ost und West”, Rotary Club Bonn, August, 11.
2015    “Documents of Hope. Jewish Nationalism in Photography and Film” (in German), Toldot & Tarbut – Jewish History and Culture Lecture Series, Bonn University, June 25.

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
Conferences Co-Organized

2017    “International Symposium on German-Jewish Culture” the Richard Koebner Minerva Centre for German History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, June 25-26.
Panels Organized & Chair or Discussant
2020    “Israeli History as Global History: Crossing Borders, Extending Narratives”, Association for Jewish Studies 52th Annual Conference, Online, December 13-17.
2019    “Photoscapes in Jewish History. Locations and Topographies of Jewish Visual Culture”, Association for Jewish Studies 51th Annual Conference, San Diego, December 15-17.
2018     “Photographs as Objects, Photographs as Thoughts. On the Materiality and the Ethics of Photography in Jewish Contexts,” Association for Jewish Studies 50th Annual     Conference, Boston, December 16-18.
2017    “Jews and Photography,” Association for Jewish Studies 49th Annual Conference, Washington, December 17-19.
Conference Papers
2020    “Following Jewish Explorers into the Unknown: Visual Culture, Knowledge, and Movement in Weimar German Travelogues”, Association for Jewish Studies 52th Annual    Conference, Online, December 13-17.
2020    “Thresholds of Photographic Contact: (Post-)Colonial Imaginations and the Modern Jewish Experience of Displacement, 1933-1945”, Con:Tact! Photography and Agency,   Museum Folkwang Essen/Online, October 16-17.
2020    “Side-Seeing. International Photography and Local Identity in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War”, 53. Deutscher Historikertag, Munich, September, 8-11 (postponed due to Covid-19).
2020    “Reality’s Alternatives. International Photography and German-Jewish Politics”, German History Society Annual Conference. Hosted Virtually, September 1-3.
2020    “Photo/Agencies. International Angles and Local Perspectives on 1940s Mandate Palestine”, Association for Israel Studies 36th Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 29-July 1 (cancelled due to Covid-19).
2020    “On the Truth of Visual Fictions. Hans Kohn Between Propaganda and Politics”, West Coast Germanists Workshop, GHI West, University of California, Berkeley, April 23-24 (postponed due to Covid-19).
2020    “Sights of Division. Jewish Photojournalists and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War”, Western Jewish Studies Annual Conference, Las Vegas, March 29-30 (postponed due to Covid-19).
2019    “South-East of Berlin. A German Jewish Photojournalist in India", "Mosse's Europe: New Perspectives in the History of German Jews, Fascism and Sexuality", Berlin, June 6-9.
2019    “Crossing Visions. Photography in Mandate Palestine as Multi-National and Transdisciplinary Encounter”, Transdisciplinary Perspectives in the Field of Jewish Cultural Studies, Simon-Dubnow-Institute, Leipzig, February 25-26.  
2019    “Kodak Conversations. The Cultural Dynamics of Mandate Palestine’s Photographic Economy”, Israeli Forum for the Research of the History of Zionism, Tel Aviv, January, 11.
2017    “Photographic Orientations. The Intricate Politics of Georg Landauer’s Photobook ‘Palästina. 300 Bilder’” (in German), Deutschsprachige Zionismen, Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin, October 25-27.
2017    “Fascism’s Orientalism. Nazi Germany, Zionism and the Photographic Representation of Palestine,” 17th World Congress in Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 6-10.
2017    “Flows and/of Images. The Yishuv of the 1940s in Photographic History,” Israeli Forum for the Research of the History of Zionism Annual Conference, Tel Hai, July 3-4.
2017    “Imperialist Dreams and Domesticated Exoticism. The Orient in the Nazi German Mind,” Yad Vashem Annual Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Workshop, Jerusalem, February 23.
2016    “Tobacco and Politics. The Orient, Zionism and the German Consumer,” Association for Jewish Studies 48th Annual Conference, San Diego, December 18-20.
2016    “Global Visions, Envisioned Mobility and Visual Friction: Agency Photographs and the Contested Nature of a ‘National Socialist Aesthetics’”, “Photographing under Dictatorships of the Twentieth Century,” Humboldt University, Berlin, October 26-28.
2016    “The Eastern and the Western Landscape? Photojournalism and the Making of a Jewish National Space,” Association for Israel Studies 32th Annual Conference, Jerusalem, June 20-22.
2015    “Antagonist Optics. Photographs of Jewish Palestine and the Nazi German Gaze,” Association for Jewish Studies 47th Annual Conference, Boston, December 13-15.
2015    “Creating a Zionist Aesthetics. The Role of Weimar Photography in Zionist Education,” Midwest Jewish Studies Association 27th Annual Conference, Lawrence, October 17-18.
2015    “Tailored Heimat: Hadassah America and the Creation of an Israeli ‘National Optics’ for the American Eye,” Spiritual Homelands, Wahlheimat, Elective Exiles, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, October 7-9.
2013    “New Spirits – Old Wounds. Israeli Intellectuals and the German Problem,” EAIS Annual Conference: Israel between International Relations and Domestic Policies, SOAS, London, September 15-16.

CAMPUS TALKS
2017    “Archives of Migration. The Shores of Palestine as Visual Icons of the 1940s,” Migrating Images – Images of Migration, Center for German Studies, Hebrew University,   Jerusalem, June 11.
2017    “Frontiers, Gates and a War. Photography and the Image of Palestine 1939-1945,” Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Hebrew University, Annual Graduate Conference, Jerusalem, May 28-29.
2016    “Contested Place - Conflicted Gaze. Palestine in Nazi German Photojournalism,” Daat HaMakom Centre for the Study of Cultures of Place in Jewish Modernity, Annual Conference, Yad HaShmona, July 3-4.
2016    “On the Different Temporalities of the Palestinian Landscape. Photographs of Transition,” Photography in Exile, The Richard Koebner Minerva Centre for German History, Jerusalem, June 19-20.
2015    “The Other Palestine. The Visual Construction of a National Space in Germany and North America,” Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center Colloquium for German Jewish History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, April 30.
2015    “The Political Eye. The Role of Visual Culture in the Construction of Palestine as a Jewish National Space,” The Richard Koebner Minerva Centre for German History Lecture Series, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, January 19.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Hebrew University, Sole Instructor    
The History of Photography and Photography as History, Spring 2018 (in Hebrew)
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Teaching Assistant
The History of the Holocaust, Spring 2016

TEACHING AREAS
History of the Holocaust
Modern Jewish History
European History
The History of Photography
Israeli History

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Co-Founder and Organizer, International Research Initiative on the Intersections of Jewish History and the History of Photography, with Maya Benton, Curator, International Center of Photography, New York, 2017-present
Organizer, Research Group on Visual Culture, Hebrew University, 2016-2017
Program Assistant, Oxford Lecture Series “Israel – Historical, Political and Social Aspects,” 2011-2013
Graduate Student Representative, Search Committee, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford 2011-2013

LANGUAGES
German, native
English, fluent (reading, writing, speaking)
Hebrew, fluent (reading, writing, speaking)
French, proficient (reading, writing, speaking)
Yiddish, proficient (reading)

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Association for Jewish Studies
Kollegium Jüdische Studien des Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
Postdoc Netzwerk für Jüdische Studien der Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo-Baeck-Instituts in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Association for Israel Studies
European Association for Jewish Studies
World Union of Jewish Studies
Israeli Forum for the Research of the History of Zionism

 
 
 
   

 

(Photograph by Monika Schuerle)

Read Less
Tamar

Tamar Kojman

Ph.D. Fellow

Academic Interests:  Modern German and European history, national character, gender and national stereotypes, secularization, religious history

 

Read More

Tamar Kojman is a PhD Candidate in German Intellectual History at the History Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (since 2018) and as Fellow at the Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center a member of the research group “The Evolution of Attention in Modern and Contemporary Culture: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Making of the Human.”

Her  Dissertation Project on “'The Apolitical German' and the Question of German Statehood, 1830-1880" is supervised by Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi.

She received the Minerva Fellowship 2020 (University of Göttingen; host supervisor Prof. Dirk Schumann) and the Armbruster Fellowship 2019 (FU Berlin; host supervisor Prof. Oliver Janz)) as well as the President Scholarship for Humanities.

In 2016 she graduated in European Studies at the Hebrew University; MA Thesis: Between German and European Identity Formation: Universalism and Particularism in Postwar German Intellectual Discourse (magna cum laude), supervised by Thobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann.

Between 2010-2014 she studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, B.Mus (Classical Piano Performance; magna cum laude).

Publications:

  • “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).
  • “‘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).
  • “Germanness and Religious Universalism in the Aftermath of the 1844 Trier Pilgrimage”, in: Nations and Nationalism 27, 4 (October 2021). doi.org/10.1111/nana.12735.
  • “An Awkward Predicament: The German Man and Feminized Modernity in the 1840s”, in:  Central European History, revised and resubmitted December 2022
Read Less
Dr. Hilla Lavie

Dr. Hilla Lavie

Associated Research Fellow (Post Doc)

Academic interests: modern German cultural history, film studies and film history, German-Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, queer history, environmental history

Read More

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Less
Amit Levy

Amit Levy

Post Doc Fellow

Academic interests: History of migration, migrating knowledge and professions, and their impact on cross-cultural encounters in the 20th century, especially in the Arab-Jewish context

Read More

Amit Levy is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Koebner Center’s project ‘German-Jewish Photo Albums, 1928–1948: Meaning and Agency in Inconceivable Times’, where he studies early Jewish return to Germany as reflected in private photography.

He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2021; the book adaptation to his award-winning doctoral dissertation, A New Orient: From German Orientalism to Israeli Mizrahanut, will be published in 2023 by Magnes Press/Koebner-Minerva Center.
In his current project, Amit explores encounters of local and migrating knowledge in Jerusalem under the British Mandate. 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 Orientalism to Israeli 'Mizraḥanut' (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2023) (forthcoming; Hebrew).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

  • “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 Series (Leiden: Brill, 2023) (forthcoming).
  • (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, Volume V: The Nation State and Higher Education (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2023) (forthcoming; Hebrew).
  • “Conflicting German Orientalism: Zionist Arabists and Arab Scholars, 1926–1938,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2022) (appeared online).
  • “The Archive as Storyteller: Refractions of German-Jewish Oriental Studies Migration in Personal Archives,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts / Dubnow Institute Yearbook XVII (2018), pp. 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 10.1 (September 2016), pp. 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 Winter), pp. 39–57 (Hebrew).
  • “‘Ma’alesh, Nistader’: Arabic in the Folklore of the Palmach during the 1940s,” Hayo Haya: Student History Journal 11 (2015), pp. 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), pp. 147–148.

Academic Articles in Catalogs, Magazines and Blogs 

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), pp. 207–210 (Hebrew).
Read Less