University of Munich
Intellektuelles Leben und deutsch-jüdisches Milieu im Jerusalemer Stadtviertel Rechavia
My PhD-thesis „Aschkenas in Jerusalem – die religiösen Institutionen der Einwanderer aus Deutschland im Jerusalemer Stadtviertel Rechavia 1933-2004“ deals with strategies of Geman-Jewish immigrants in Jerusalem in the 1930s to rebuild their religious traditions brought from Germany – and thereby rescue the rich heritage of Aschkenas from the destruction by the Nazis. The immigrants tried to reach this by founding new synagogues or educational institutions with religious background. Although they came from different ideological backgrounds – some of them were rooted in different wings of German Orthodoxy, some of them were adherents of Liberal Judaism – with these institutions they all tried to contribute to the constitution of the Land of Israel. In the struggle for the establishment of their synagogues and school’s manifold religious-political interrelations and conflicts from the 19th and early 20th centuries showed up which had been taken in the symbolic package of the immigrants to Jerusalem. These conflicts – combined with the lacking willingness to integrate the German Jewish cultural artefacts into the religious life of
the Jischuv – made the development of most of the immigrant institutions nearly impossible. However, especially the orthodox educational institutions managed to hold their ground – a phenomenon which I analyzed in my thesis.
Dr. Christian Kraft has been a teacher of history and ethics / philosophy at the Hans-Küng-Gemeinschaftsschule Tübingen since 2022. He studied Modern and Contemporary History and Philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg. From 2006 to 2012, he wrote his dissertation “Aschkenas in Jerusalem” at the Chair of Jewish History at LMU Munich under the supervision of Professor Michael Brenner. He
was also an educational assistant at the Max Mannheimer Study Center Dachau from 2008 to 2016, worked as a consultant for the Museum Education Center Munich from 2007 to 2016 and for the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site from 2009 to the present.