When Bryan Cheyette approached the Editorial Board with the proposal of putting together a selection of studies on Israel Zangwill, we were delighted to accept and welcome him as a guest editor. Zangwill fits into the topic of British-Jewish literature that has been featured from time to time from the early days of the journal but has had greater coverage in recent years.1 Bryan uses his introduction to give an overview of the contributors and their articles while discussing the influence of Zangwill's writings in France, America and Israel and his continuing significance.
The issue is completed with a variety of individual articles received by the journal. Some fall under the general rubric of contemporary Jewish thought, and one on Holocaust research.
Dana Evan Kaplan explores the life and achievements of Rabbi Herbert Weiner, author of the ground-breaking popular exploration of Jewish mystical thought and experience, 9½ Mystics: The Kabbalah Today. He captures the seeming incongruity of such a quest at the time by an American Reform rabbi, given the consciously rational orientation of contemporary American Reform Judaism. Yet his popular writings attracted many who felt that something was missing and were seeking a Jewish religious experience that would be spiritually intense. Kaplan captures Rabbi Weiner's seriousness in his pursuit and modesty about his accomplishments. As Kaplan notes, he considered himself the ‘half’ mystic in the title of his book. The editor had the good fortune to belong to a circle of people who were exploring Judaism in Jerusalem in the time leading up to and following the ‘Six Day War’ in 1967. Among them was Rabbi Weiner, who once mentioned that one of his family had become ultra-orthodox, and he suggested this was a divine punishment on a Reform rabbi for dabbling in Jewish mysticism!
Margaret Jacobi delivered the first Memorial Lecture for her father Rabbi Harry Martin Jacobi.2 She tells something of her father's history, a ‘double refugee’, from Berlin to Amsterdam after Kristallnacht, to England in 1940 after the German invasion of Holland, his commitment to justice and campaigns on behalf of refugees. She explores biblical and Talmudic teachings on the topic of justice and introduces the personal influence on her father of the Hon. Lily Montagu, herself a passionate advocate of social justice.
Leon Yudkin contributed an article to this journal on ‘Eruption of Creative Genius in Central Europe’,3 in an issue that sadly also contained his obituary. David Herman reflects on Yudkin's career and contribution to studies in European, Yiddish and Israeli literature while also reviewing his posthumous collection of essays, Fiction Derailed: Form for the Modern.4 We also published Yudkin's paper ‘Jeremiah as a Literary Source in Twentieth Century Germany’,5 a reminder that the Hebrew Bible was also a literary text that he studied, including as a regular participant, with his wife Mickey, at the Annual International Jewish-Christian Bible Week in Germany.
We have twice published the work of Eric Brothers,6 author of Berlin Ghetto: Herbert Baum and the Anti-Fascist Resistance. His article aims to provide missing information on the role of the Gestapo in the history and fate of the Baum Group and to encourage blending resistance research with research on the Gestapo.
Notes
An early example is the article by Michael Kustow, ‘Arnold Wesker's Messianic Ideal’ (Volume 7, No. 1, Winter 1972/73, pp. 46–48). Under the editorship of Anthony Rudolf we published ‘Isaac Rosenberg: An Unpublished Letter’ with an introduction and commentary by Jean Liddiard in Volume 9, No. 2, Summer 1975, pp. 25–29. Under the editorship of Albert Friedlander we published an issue on ‘The Writer and Jewish Experience’ (Volume 14, No. 2, Winter 1980) featuring Dannie Abse and Bernard Kops (pp. 2–9). Under the current editor in Autumn 2014 (Volume 47, No. 2) we published the proceedings of a conference on ‘Writing Jews in Contemporary Britain’, edited by Axel Stähler and Sue Vice; with guest editor Lily Kahn, a complete issue on ‘Shakespeare and the Jews’ (Volume 51, No. 2, Autumn 2018, pp. 1–113); in Spring 2019, ‘Gabriel Josipovici at 75: A Symposium’ (Volume 52, No. 1, pp. 1–66); in Autumn 2022, ‘Howard Jacobson at Eighty’ (Volume 55, No. 2, pp. 1–113).
‘Rabbi Harry Martin Jacobi, 1925–2019, In Memoriam’, European Judaism 53, no. 1 (2020), 147–150.
Volume 47, No. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 72–75.
Editions Sugar/Sugar Press, Université de Paris VIII, 2020.
Volume 32, No. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 109–116.
‘Heroes or Victims? The Role and Antifascist Culture of Jews in the German Democratic Republic’ (Winter 1992, pp. 21–27); ‘Issues Surrounding the Development of the Neo-Nazi Scene in East Berlin’ (Volume 35, No. 2, Autumn 2000, pp. 45–50).