Reviving European-Jewish Thought and Culture after 1945

Tuition: $300 | YIVO members: $225**

This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.

Instructors: Elisabeth Gallas and Enrico Lucca

In the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust we witness a plethora of Jewish initiatives to rebuild, recreate and revive a Jewish cultural and spiritual life in Europe and in the new centers of America and Israel. This process entailed transfers and shifts—both of objects and knowledge—as well as the need to adjust and question traditional perspectives, institutions and practices.

In the seminar we will look at actors and institutions that were involved in the restoration of Jewish culture and thought in the post-war period (e.g. Salo W. Baron, Nahum Glatzer, YIVO). Having to cope with the massive scale of destruction, loss and the void left by the Holocaust, they tried to establish some sense of continuity with the past but at the same time needed to acknowledge the fundamental rupture that had occurred in Jewish existence. This tension marked all their activities and will be used as a starting point for our discussion.

Reading material including primary sources will be provided digitally for each of the six sessions of the seminar. They will help us to understand the way Jewish culture and thought were revived and in what way European-Jewish traditions vanished, were transformed or conserved throughout this process.

Course Materials:
Students should purchase the following book before the first date of class:

• A Mortuary of Books: The Rescue of Jewish Culture after the Holocaust, by Elisabeth Gallas (Purchase)

The instructors will provide any other course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

Elisabeth Gallas is deputy to the director and head of the research unit “Law” at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig, Germany. She studied Cultural Studies and German literature, and received her Ph.D in Modern History from Leipzig University in 2011 with a thesis that was turned into her first book: “Das Leichenhaus der Bücher” Kulturrestitution und jüdisches Geschichtsbewusstsein nach 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht); a revised and translated English version was published in 2019 with NYU Press: A Mortuary of Books. The Rescue of Jewish Culture after the Holocaust. Her research interests include Modern Jewish (legal) History, Holocaust and Aftermath Studies.

Enrico Lucca is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig – Simon Dubnow. He has studied in Milan (Phd 2012), Chicago, and Jerusalem. He is interested in European Jewish thought and in the early history of Jewish cultural institutions in British Palestine (The Hebrew University, the Jewish National Library). His recent publications include: "Into Life." Franz Rosenzweig on Knowledge, Aesthetics, and Politics (Leiden-Boston 2021, with Antonios Kalatzis) and the edition of André Neher, Critique biblique et tradition juive (Paris, 2022).

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