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    <title>Jewish Textual Architectures - Articles</title>
    <description>Latest Articles from the Online Anthology</description>
    <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/date</link>
    <lastBuildDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:49:20 +0000</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[Joshua Spies, The imaginery Jewish topography of a central German city]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In his novel “A tog in Regensburg”, first published in 1933 by
Malino Verlag in New York, the Yiddish-language writer Joseph Opatoshu
describes a wedding between a Jewish woman from Regensburg and a
Jewish man from Worms in Regensburg. The story is set in 1519, which
in real history is the year of the expulsion of the Jews from
Regensburg. This is also addressed in the course of the story, but the
text begins with Schames Jekil, the synagogue servant, who, full of
anticipation for the wedding and in expectation of the guests, tells
his son Berl about the wedding plans. In the first few pages, Opatoshu
has Jekil look back on his Jewish Regensburg and his seventy years of
life in this city. In addition to the residents of the Jewish quarter,
he also thinks of its buildings, such as the yeshiva, the talmud
school. The section chosen here, pp. 12–15, ends with a description
of the synagogue in the midday sun, behind which the spires of St.
Emmeram’s Church can be seen. As the plot unfolds, the guests from
Worms, jugglers, and beggars arrive in the city and the first
celebrations begin, with the Yiddish songs of the various groups,
including the jugglers and Talmud students, playing a prominent role.
The arrival of Jossilman Rosheim, the legal representative of the
Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire at that time, is
accompanied by news of the imminent expulsion of the Jews from
Regensburg.

This article refers to the new edition of the first German translation
entitled “Ein Tag in Regensburg” [A Day in Regensburg] from 2009,
which was published in 2019 by the Regensburg publishing house
Friedrich Pustet on the occasion of the opening of the new synagoge in
Regensburg.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/spies-imaginery-jewish-topography</link>
      <pubDate>Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Beate Lehmann, Born out of crisis: Siegfried Lehmann’s idea for a youth settlement in Palestine]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The diary of Jewish doctor and educator Siegfried Lehmann is kept in
the archives of the children’s and youth village Ben Schemen in
Israel, which he founded. It is a thread-bound notebook in DIN A5
format with a semi-rigid black cover and blank pages. The first pages
of the notebook, which were apparently written on, are missing, and
the last pages, which were probably blank, have been cut out. The
entries cover the period from December 29, 1924 to December 20, 1930
on 87 pages. The individual entries were generally written at long
intervals. The entry dated February 28, 1925 deserves special
attention. At that time, Siegfried Lehmann had already decided to give
up his position as head of the Jewish orphanage in Lithuania and leave
the children’s home he had founded in Kaunas. His plan was to
establish an agricultural youth settlement in Palestine, where
children and young people from Kaunas would receive agricultural
training that would enable them to earn their own living later on. In
the entry dated February 28, 1925, Siegfried Lehmann describes what
motivated him and how he envisioned the settlement. Siegfried Lehmann
used various materials and methods to win supporters for his idea,
including brochures, lectures and films. However, Lehmann used his
diary entries solely for self-reflection and to structure his
thoughts. He never published the sketch of the planned youth
settlement that accompanied the entry.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/lehmann-lehmann-youth-settlement-palestine</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Regina Stephan, A Semitic commonwealth of Jews and Arabs. Erich Mendelsohn’s observations, reflections, and advice for the future of Palestine in 1940]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[The author of the text is the architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953)
from Allenstein, East Prussia. He emigrated from Germany in March
1933. In the same year, he founded new offices in London and in 1935
in Jerusalem, between which he travelled. The short text (18.5 p.)
published by Jerusalem Press Ltd. in Palestine, then a British
Mandate, in an unknown edition has no illustrations. It was published
in February 1940, when Mendelsohn was living in Palestine with his
wife. They had left London in the early summer of 1939 due to the
recognizable threat of war. However, the situation in Palestine was
also difficult. Mendelsohn’s building projects suffered from the
Arab uprising between 1936 and 1939. In September 1939, the German
Wehrmacht invaded Poland, starting the Second World War. The following
month, the British Mandate government imposed a ban on immigration to
Palestine. The 53-year-old architect, who had already visited
Palestine for the first time in 1923, when there were still far fewer
European immigrants living in the country, wrote the text at a
politically extremely turbulent time. He starts the text with a review
of 6,000 years of history of the Mediterranean and its neighbors. In
his view, Ottoman rule led to the decline of Palestine, which is
nevertheless “the only solution to the perpetual conundrum” facing
European Jews today. However, he notes that Palestine is not an
uninhabited country, but on the contrary part of the Arab world.
Therefore, the fate of Palestine depends on Jews and Arabs seeing
themselves as members of the common Semitic family and developing the
country together. It is a demand towards both sides.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/stephan-mendelsohn-future-palestine</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Juana Torralbo Higuera, Scholem Asch: Uncommon neighbors in Got fun nekome: A building shared by a brothel and a family residence]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[Got fun nekome (The God of Vengeance; 1907) is a Yiddish language play
by Scholem Asch. The action takes place in the present time (1907) in
one large town of a Russian province. It can be read as part of a
trilogy depicting the “underworld” together with Motke ganef
(Motke Thief; 1917), and Der toyter Mensch (The Dead Man; 1922). The
narrative tells the story of the Tchaftchovitsch family, which
consists of the father (Yankl), a brothel owner, the mother (Sarah), a
former sex worker, and their teenage daughter (Rifkele). Despite
parental efforts to keep her away from the “underworld” of the
brothel, Rifkele becomes romantically involved with Manke, one of the
sex workers at the brothel run by her father. Concurrently, Yankl and
Sarah have initiated conversations with the matchmaker and are
striving to ensure their daughter is considered a good candidate to
marry and start a family. In this way, Yankl and Sarah hope to redeem
themselves from their sins of a life linked to sex trafficking. This
redemption is unfulfilled since Rifkele runs away one night with
Manke. The uncertainty of Rifkele’s “pureness” after spending
one night with Manke makes her father sabotage the engagement. Scholem
Asch (1880-1957) wrote Yiddish novels and plays. He was born in Kutno,
a city from the Russian Empire, and resettled in New York City after
World War I broke out where he became a US citizen. His publications
and the stagings of his plays were often surrounded by public
controversies shining light on contemporary sociopolitical issues.
This entry refers to the German translation of the play published in
1907 by the S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/torralbo-higuera-scholem-asch</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Björn Weyand, Between consumer culture and intertextuality: Jewish identity in Berlin modernism around 1900]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In 1906, Edmund Edel (1863–1934), a popular poster artist and
caricaturist in Berlin, made his debut as a writer with his satire
Berlin W. A Few Chapters from the Surface [Berlin W. Ein Paar Kapitel
von der Oberfläche]. The book sheds light on the new affluent social
class that settled in the west of Berlin on Kurfürstendamm and its
surrounding districts around 1900. There is no continuous plot and no
protagonists. Instead, the nine chapters create a social panorama of
caricature-like characters. These are also depicted in the numerous
drawings made by Edel, which are inserted into the text. The focus is
on family and social life, which was characterized by the newly
emerging consumer culture with its department stores and fashions -
the new ’surface culture’, which is referred to in the subtitle.
Edel presents a bourgeois class that can only be recognized as Jewish
through occasional references and an intertextual play with the Torah.
His satire is thus a revealing document about metropolitan Jewish life
around 1900 between tradition and modernity, religious identity and
secular everyday culture. Berlin W. was published by the Berlin
Publisher Boll und Pickardt. In addition to the regular hardback
bookshop edition, fifty numbered copies bound in parchment and signed
by the author were also offered. The book has 160 pages in octavo
format. The individual chapters are named: The family [Die Familie],
The marriage [Die Ehe], The day [Der Jour], The time of the young love
[Die Zeit der jungen Liebe], Art and artist [Kunst und Künstler], In
the zoo [Im Zoo], On the journey [Auf Reisen], When they go out in the
evening [Wenn sie abends ausgehen], U. A. w. g.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/weyand-jewish-identity-berlin-modernism</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sietske van der Veen, “I Call You to Witness, Ruben”: Siegfried van Praag and his Jerusalem of the West]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[This is an excerpt from the 1961 novel Jeruzalem van het Westen
Jerusalem of the West by the Dutch Jewish writer Siegfried Emanuel van
Praag (1899–2002). It shows one of the characters, a Jewish
‘Amsterdammer’ who had made aliyah long before the Shoah,
posthumously addressing the protagonist, Van Praag´s alter ego Ruben
Joseph, on a visit to Israel in the 1950s: “I call you to witness,
Ruben, you, who has lived your youth in our Jerusalem of the West.”
Ik roep jou tot getuige Ruben, jij, die je jeugd in ons Jeruzalem van
het Westen hebt geleefd. (S. 458). The command epitomizes Van
Praag’s motivation for writing the book, which is, in essence, a
monument dedicated to pre-war Amsterdam Jewry. Before the Shoah, about
ten percent of the population of Amsterdam was Jewish. Only a small
number of them survived. The percentage of Jews from the Netherlands
killed in the Shoahwas much higher than in other occupied countries in
Western Europe. In these pages, the major themes of the novel come
together: Zionism, which strongly defined Van Praag’s Jewish
identity and writing, the urban landscape of Amsterdam, the city of
his youth, and, most importantly, the Jews who had inhabited it, in
all their shades and colors. Van Praag finished the first version of
Jeruzalem van het Westen in 1947. The manuscript was turned down by
several publishers. Only ten years later and after being thoroughly
rewritten, the Leopold publishing house in The Hague decided to
publish what its director termed one of Van Praag’s “most poignant
books.” Letter from Kees Kingmans to Siegfried van Praag, 29
September 1960, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, UBA189 Archief Siegfried
van Praag, uninventorised The initial manuscript, as well as the
writer’s personal diaries detailing his visits to Amsterdam after
the war, are held at the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana in Amsterdam.
Studied alongside the final novel, these documents offer an
interesting insight into how Van Praag related to the Jewish urban
landscapes of his native city.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/van-der-veen-van-praag-jerusalem</link>
      <pubDate>Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Susanne Korbel, Living conditions and home labor in Vienna in the early 20th century]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[In 1928, the Vienna publishing house “Arbeit und Wirtschaft”
published a social science study on the “living and working
conditions of home workers in Vienna” on behalf of the Chamber of
Laborers. It was written by the activist, editor, sociologist and
social democrat Käthe Leichter (born Käthe Marianne Katharina Pick
in 1895, murdered in 1942). The study is based on around 4,000
questionnaires sent out in March 1927, “at the time of the strongest
growth in home labour [zur Zeit des stärksten Anwachsens der
Heimarbeit]” (p. 7). Of the 4,000 questionnaires, 1,500 were
returned filled out, of which 500 were deemed unusable. Leichter
interpreted and statistically evaluated the results and presented them
in a didactic manner on display boards. This was the largest study of
its kind to date  A current research project is investigating the
circumstances, consequences and nature of such encounters between Jews
and non-Jews in “private” spaces in Budapest and Vienna, the two
cities where the Habsburg monarchy had its residence. FWF ESP 120:
Entanglements of Jews and non-Jews in Private Spaces, Budapest and
Vienna 1880–1930.. The total volume comprises 145 pages, which are
divided according to thematic aspects and the conditions of home labor
in various occupational groups (clothing manufacture, chemical
industry, paper manufacturing, etc.). In the introduction, Leichter
discusses the structure of the study and methodological shortcomings,
such as the fact that child labor was downplayed while other abuses
were exaggerated. Among many important findings, Leichter concludes
that home labor in Vienna was “a problem of women’s work [ein
Problem der Frauenarbeit]” (p. 5). The excerpt selected and
presented in more detail below (four pages) covers the discussion of
the living conditions of home workers in the first part of the study
(pp. 43 to 46).]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/korbel-living-conditions-in-wien</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Beate Lehmann, A Zionist and educational flagship project. Siegfried Lehmann and the orphanage in Kowno]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[“Utopia” is a short story whose author, place and year of
publication are unknown. The story was probably first printed in 1925,
presumably in German. It was used to promote Siegfried Lehmann´s plan
to establish an agricultural youth settlement in Palestine. With its
educational description of the upbringing and training of young
immigrants in Palestine based on Zionist ideas, the text is part of
Jewish cultural heritage. “Utopia” also focuses on an agricultural
settlement, a village, in the pre-state era of Israel. The text thus
emphasizes the importance of rural areas, which were of great
(Zionist) ideological interest but were rarely described in terms of
their actual design at the time. The settlement planned by Lehmann –
Ben Schemen – was finally founded in 1927. Four years after his
death, a Hebrew collection of his writings was published in 1962.
Although the editors included “Utopia” in “The Idea and its
Realization ” Lehmann´s authorship is questionable: the style of
the narrative differs significantly from other texts he wrote during
the same period. A diary entry written at around the same time as
“Utopia” with a sketch of the planned youth settlement can be
clearly attributed to Lehmann: “The Idea and its Realization”, the
English translation of the collection of texts, was finally published
in 1978 on the 20th anniversary of Lehmann’s death as a private
print. “Utopia” describes a visit by a group of adults to a
Palestinian youth village. The visitors get to know the village,
including its residential buildings, educational facilities, and
workshops. They attend church service, school lessons and a
celebration. In conversations, they learn a lot about community life
and the origins of the young villagers. The guests later hear from
Jewish settlers who have been living in the country for a long time
that the presence of the children and young people motivates and
encourages the settlers themselves. After their visit, the group must
return to Europe. “Utopia” concludes with an appeal to readers to
support the realization of a youth village like the one described.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/lehmann-orphanage-kowno</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sonja Dickow-Rotter, “Jewish reminiscences that need to be mentioned” - Martin Cohen’s “A ramble through the large German congregations of Hamburg“, Israelitisches Familienblatt 32 (1930), No. 47, November 20,1930]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[On November 20,1930, the 25-year-old Martin Cohen (1905-1962), son of
a rabbi from a Sephardic family in Altona, published his “Ramble
through the large German congregations of Hamburg [Streifzug durch die
deutschen Großgemeinden von Hamburg]”. The article appeared in the
Israelitisches Familienblatt 32, No. 47 as a report in a series
published on the various large congregations in Germany in 1930 and
1931  (cf. Studemund-Halévy/Menny 2013, p. 28). The report, printed
in three columns and filling just under a page, describes important
Jewish buildings and places in the Hanseatic city such as synagogues,
prayer rooms, schools, residential homes and lodges in Hamburg’s
Neustadt district, St. Pauli, the harbor area and the Grindel
neighborhood, and discusses their historical and contemporary
features. The districts of Altona, Wandsbek and Harburg, which were
added under the National Socialists’ Greater Hamburg Act of 1937,
are not mentioned. The Israelitische Familienblatt was aimed at a
Jewish readership, to whom Cohen wanted to convey aspects of
Hamburg’s Jewish city history with his article.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/dickow-rotter-martin-cohens-ramble</link>
      <pubDate>Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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      <title><![CDATA[Pavel Brunssen, Georg Spitaler, Suburban club versus coffee house club: Jewish difference and the topography of Viennese football]]></title>
      <description><![CDATA[On October 8, 1927, a commentary appeared in the popular Viennese
sports magazine Illustriertes Sportblatt that dealt with the sporting
developments in Viennese football. The article is exemplary for the
construction of a specific cultural topography of the city, which in
interwar Vienna was defined not least by the category of “Jewish
difference [jüdischer Differenz]”. Before and after 1918, Vienna
was an important place for the development of various Jewish
self-perceptions and external images of “Jews”. The Jewish
population of the city was just under ten percent. An important field
of activity for Jewish men - and to a limited extent Jewish women -
was football, which established itself as one of the most important
mass cultures during this period and established Vienna as one of its
European centers. Football stadiums became spaces for political
discourse, combining sport and society. A cultural topography of
Viennese football emerged in and around the stadiums that has remained
powerful to this day. It revolved around the central antagonism
between the suburbs with their proletarian connotations and the
bourgeois city, of “down-to-earth [bodenständigen]” clubs such as
the Rapid sports club or the Floridsdorfer Admira, which were
juxtaposed with the “city clubs” Wiener Amateur-Sportverein
(called Amateure, later FK Austria) and the national Jewish SC Hakoah.
The cipher “Jewish” was associated with the city center and the
coffee house - as a metaphor and place for club meetings.]]></description>
      <link>https://jewish-textual-architectures.online/article/brunssen_spitaler-suburban-club-versus-coffee-house</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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