Our window into this community opens through Glückel of Hameln, a remarkable woman who has long fascinated scholars and readers. The manuscript of her diary can be read in digitized form here.
As the Jewish Women's Archive describes in its article about her, "this businesswoman and memoir-writer was born to affluent family in Hamburg, Germany. She married young and had fourteen children, twelve of whom survived past infancy. Glückel was an active partner in her husband’s business and managed the business after his death in 1689. She began writing memoirs in 1691 to help her own mental state and educate her children about their family history. These memoirs are incredibly detailed, combining a meticulous record of her life and descriptions of events that occurred in local Jewish communities during that period. Her memoirs are both a singularly important social and historical document and one of the greatest literary achievements of Ashkenazi prose–in Yiddish or Hebrew–at least until the end of the eighteenth century."Through her, we get a glimpse of the centuries-old Jewish community in the lands which comprise modern Germany, the original territory known as Ashkenaz (later expanded to include many other parts of Europe). Scroll on for more items and links to relevant materials.
To accompany Pinchas ben Abraham Halevy of Halberstadt's calendar, watch this collaboration between the National Library of Israel and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Join Dr. Yoel Finkelman and Rabbanit Nechama Barash of Pardes as they take a look at some of the rare items in the National Library's collections and discuss the texts and questions surrounding the concept of the Jewish calendar. Check out the accompanying worksheet here.
“Poetic Textures: Else Lasker-Schüler Archives. An Online Platform” is a collaboration between the National Library of Israel, home to Lasker-Schüler’s personal archive, and the German Literature Archive (DLA), home to a significant collection of her works. The platform, available in English, provides a window into the life and work of Lasker-Schüler, offering digital access for the first time to a large portion of her physically scattered literary and artistic legacy, accompanied by explanatory and illuminating texts provided by leading experts. Watch an event in German celebrating the launch of the platform.
The fully digitized Mahzor of Worms.
The Walter Benjamin collection within the archive of Gershom Scholem.
Germany-related lectures in our events archive:
The bakery of the Jewish Community — an excavated element of the Jewish-Medieval Heritage in Erfurt. Watch.
The Unexpected Arrivals: Soviet Jews in West Berlin 1972–1989. Watch.
Spiritual Resistance from the Sources of Judaism: Leo Baeck as a Scholar and Representative of German Jewry during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi Period. Watch.
Next-door Neighbors: Jewish-Christian Legal Encounters in Medieval Ashkenaz. Watch.
Everyday Writing in Medieval Ashkenaz: The Cologne Slates. Watch.
Two more events in German:
Nachlassbewusstsein und Bestandsbildung: Moshe Yaakov Ben-Gavriel (Eugen Hoeflich). Watch.
Die Nationalbibliothek und ihre Geschichte: Sammlungen, Personen und Wendepunkte. Watch.
Educational activities:
German communities on the Education portal. Explore.
Blog stories:
The Less Famous Scholem? Meet Gershom’s Brother, Werner.
German Jewry stories on the blog.
