Texte

Jewish life existed long before Christian centuries and was early characterized by migration and exile, when the 12 sons of Jacob, later called Yisrael, first went to Egypt, were enslaved there and under Moses’ leadership managed to escape from Egypt.
According to tradition, the “Babylonian Captivity” to Mesopotamian Babylon (today Iraq) followed 400 years later. Further migrations subsequently led to the so-called Diaspora (Greek), the geographical dispersion of the Jewish people in the Mediterranean region and in Asia: first after the conquests of Alexander the Great and then after the transformation of Judea into a Roman province in the 1st century AD, when Roman troops under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.

This event was a deep cut in Jewish history and found its way into the collective memory of mankind until later times.

The conquest of Jerusalem and the resulting disintegration of the Jewish people in Palestine led to an even greater emigration to various regions of the world at that time, with repercussions up to our time. Thus, from then on, this diaspora was to run like a thread through the history of Jewish life in families and communities across all provinces of the Roman Empire, but also to Persia, Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) and Egypt. This was especially true after the collapse of the Roman Empire with the abdication of the last emperor During the great migrations that followed, new power structures of European proportions arose in the early medieval kingdom and empire of Charlemagne, with corresponding opportunities for exchange.

It can be assumed that the resumption of ancient traditions (“Carolingian Renaissance”) promoted by Charlemagne included, for example, works of Mediterranean physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen, but also works of Arab and Jewish physicians in medicine and pharmacy.

Captions
Fig. 1: Relief of a menorah on the triumphal arch erected for Titus in Rome (Source: Wall relief sur arc de Titus illustrant la menorah du Temple de Jérusalem prise en l’an 70, Hanna Kim, via alamyimages.fr)
Fig. 2: Colored woodcut of a stylized city of Jerusalem with fictitious fire sites in the 1493 World Chronicle by Nuremberg physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (Source: Woodcut of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans from Schedel’s World Chronicle, sheet 63v/64r, public domain, Wikipedia Commons).
Fig. 3: The Roman Empire in its geographical dimensions in antiquity and late antiquity (Source: Empire romain en + 150, ColdEel, Wikimedia Commons).

An important religious and social symbol of Judaism is the mezuzah (Hebrew for doorpost) with blessings for the house and its inhabitants. Texts from the Torah are attached to doorposts in small capsules, touched with the fingers by devout residents and visitors, and the fingers are then brought to the mouth as a kiss (the so-called mezuzah kiss).

But also the Shabbat with its strict holiday rest, the cemetery culture and the wearing of head coverings (headscarf or kippa) in the synagogue and in public belong to religious symbolic acts.

In Jewish life, religious festivals (with associated food, fruit and baked goods) such as the New Year in September, the Feast of Tabernacles in October or the Feast of Atonement Yom Kippur have high symbolic value. Matzos, as unleavened flatbread, also play an important role in the Jewish diet. This must be kosher according to more or less strict regulations (marking by kosher stamp).

With all these symbols and rites, religious regulations and customs have developed into traditions over the centuries.

Captions:
Fig. 5 | 6: The bronze menorah stands in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem and was created by Benno Elkan, who lived and worked artistically as a sculptor in Alsbach an der Bergstraße from 1911 to 1919. (Source: Benno Elkan, Tamar Hayardeni, via Wikipedia Commons | Seven-branched candelabrum in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem, 29 individual pieces, bronze, 4.75m x 3.65m, 1949-1956, Wk-Nr. 320, Proesi, via Wikimedia Commons)
Fig. 7: Mezuzah. (Source: zeevveez from Jerusalem, Israel, via Wikimedia Commons)
Fig. 8: The Jewish cemetery in Alsbach-Hähnlein is one of the oldest and largest in southern Hesse with 2128 gravestones preserved (1615-1948). (Source: The Jewish cemetery in Alsbach-Hähnlein, Germany, Thomas Pusch, via Wikimedia Commons)
Fig. 9: Kippa (Source: Image from Freepik)
Fig. 10: Kippa (Source: Image from Pixabay)
Fig. 11: Kosher stamp (source: stamp potwierdzający koszerność, Auschwitz Jewish Center, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Fig. 12: Matzo (source: Shmura Matzo, Yoninah, via Wikimedia Commons).

In the Hebrew term yehudi, the term means the settlement area of the tribe of Judah and made its way via ioudaios (Greek) or iudaeus (Latin) to the German term Jude, Judaism.

Judaism, also Jewishness, refers to both the religion and the cultures and traditions that have been cultivated for thousands of years.
Like Christianity and Islam, the Jewish religion belongs to the monotheistic religions that go back to Abraham as the “one God doctrine”. It has its basis in the five books proclaimed by Moses on Mount Sinai, the Torah, and the rabbinical writings interpreting them.

In different interpretations of the Torah, the approximately 15 million Jews worldwide are essentially divided in their religious orientation between:

• Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Germany or France prior to their emigration to Eastern Europe and later to the United States,
• Sephardic Jews with ancestors in Spain and Portugal before they had to flee from the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and settled in the Mediterranean region and the Ottoman Empire (here in Palestine) as well as in Central and Western Europe,
• Mizrachi Jews in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia,
• Yemenite Jews, who were isolated from the rest of the Jews for a long time and thus partly practiced their own customs, and
• Tzabar, the Jews born in the Land of Israel.

Further differentiation occurs according to interpretation of texts, traditions, and ways of life into Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism.

An important symbol for the Jewish religion and for today’s state of Israel is the “Star of David” named after David, King of Judah around 1000 BC.

Another religious as well as state symbol is the seven-branched candelabrum, the menorah, found in every Jewish home. The best known menorah is probably in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem.

Captions
Fig. 1: Jewish territories and dominions around 1000 BC (Source: Israel surrounding territories 830 B.C., Partynia, via Wikimedia Commons).
Fig. 2: Moses’ Annunciation was the subject of artistic debate in later centuries, here by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1659 (Gemäldegalerie Berlin). It shows Moses destroying the Tablets of the Law following the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf (Source: Moses with the Tablets of the Law, Rembrandt (1606-1669), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).
Fig. 3: Torah scroll from the synagogue from Groß-Umstadt in the Hessenpark (Source: Torah scroll from the synagogue from Groß-Umstadt in the Hessenpark, Bodow, via Wikipedia Commons)
Fig. 4: Star of David (Source: The Star of David, symbol of the Jewish faith and Jewish people, Zscout370, via Wikipedia Commons).

• From 1933 In many cases persecution and, as far as possible, exile all over the world.
• September 15, 1935: The National Socialists pass the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and the Nuremberg Laws in Nuremberg. In addition to their well-known ideological positions, they thus now also create the legal conditions for the intensified persecution and imprisonment of Jewish fellow citizens, culminating in the Holocaust.
• November 9, 1938 November pogroms: synagogues and Jewish prayer rooms in Germany and Austria are burned down, Jewish businesses destroyed.
• January 20, 1942: The “Wannsee Conference” decides on the complete annihilation of Jews, Jewry and Jewish life and the procedures for mass killing.
• January 27, 1945: Three months before the surrender of the German Reich, Soviet soldiers liberate the prisoners in the Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. The world learns comprehensively of the mass murder.
• November 20, 1945: Start of the Nuremberg Main War Crimes Trial and of war crimes trials until April 17, 1949: Some of the perpetrators of Nazi terror are held accountable and sentenced before an international court.
• May 14, 1948: Foundation of the State of Israel.
• July 19, 1950: Foundation of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, after Jewish life in Germany began to develop again, first hesitantly and then gradually, after the end of World War II.
• April 11 – December 15, 1961: The trial of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann before the Jerusalem District Court presents the murder in the concentration camps to the world public as a breach of civilization of unprecedented magnitude.
• December 20, 1963 – August 19, 1965: In the first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, almost 20 years after the end of the war, crimes against humanity are prosecuted in a German court and the perpetrators are convicted.
• June 1982: The Center for Research on Anti-Semitism (ZfA) is founded at the Technical University of Berlin.
• From 1991: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Eastern European Jews came to Germany.
• October 9, 2019: Right-wing extremist terrorist attack on the synagogue in Halle/Saale.
• December 21, 2020: The perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison followed by preventive detention.

• 3761 B.C. Beginning of the Jewish calendar, which was adopted by the Jewish physician and philosopher Moshe ben Maimon (Greek: Maimonides) from Cordoba (12th century), following the story of creation in the Bible.
• Before 1000 BC. The Israelites migrate to Egypt, are enslaved and flee Egypt. Moses proclaims God’s commandments on Mount Sinai.
• 6th century BC. Babylonian captivity in Mesopotamia (today Iraq).
• ca. 7 to 4 B.C. Birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
• 70 AD. Destruction of Jerusalem by Roman troops under Titus, scattering of the Jewish people in all regions of the world at that time: beginning of the Diaspora with persecutions by the respective majority society.
• ca. 4th c. – 15th c. Jews and Jewish life settle in Europe.
• 1095 The first crusade to reconquer Jerusalem from the Muslims triggers pogroms against Jews in Europe.
  pogroms against Jews on the Rhine. Later, anti-Jewish invective sculptures are placed on Christian places of worship.
• 1348 The plague in Europe is accompanied by pogroms against Jews.
• 1492 As a result of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews are expelled from Spain and Portugal and settle in the Ottoman Empire and Palestine.
• 16th/17th c. Reformation and Wars of Religion: Jews become the target of insults, expulsion and persecution.
• 17th/18th c. Age of Enlightenment: Jews and Jewish life, with their communities and synagogues, become part of society as a whole and contribute significantly to cultural and scientific development in Germany and Europe through art, music, literature, philosophy and science.
• 19th century. Emergence of a new anti-Semitism in the German Empire, France and England through anti-Jewish writings.
• August 29, 1897 Founding of the Zionist movement with the aim of establishing a Jewish state by Theodor Herzl and other initiators, including the religious philosopher Martin Buber, who later lived in Heppenheim (1916 to 1938). First immigrations and settlements of kibbutzim in Palestine.
• From 1918 Increased anti-Semitic actions after World War I, intensified in the Weimar Republic by increasing National Socialist agitation.
• January 30, 1933 By the National Socialists, terrorist expulsion of Jews from professions, deprivation of livelihoods through robbery, destruction and fiscal harassment.

A typical Jewish profession, widespread in both urban and rural Jewry, was that of a draper. But even this niche was severely restricted by the authorities. For a long time, Jews in Worms, for example, were only allowed to trade in used cloth or rags. In Frankfurt, in 1616, trade with end buyers was to be reserved for the small Christian merchants; Jews were only to trade by the bale.

Johann Ernst Mansfeld, Trödeljud, Vienna 1775, copperplate engraving

From an edition of the “Wiener Kaufruf” with depictions of the “trades and flying merchants prevalent among the people at the time, as they could be encountered in the Viennese markets.”

Sylvain Marechal, Courtière Juive, female merchant, Paris 1788, Old colored copper engraving.

Woman draper, from Costumes civils actuels, “the current civil dress of all known peoples, drawn and colored from nature.”

Moritz Oppenheim, The Country Draper, Frankfurt 1873, reproduction.

The cloth merchant wears his sample of goods over his arm, his son has the clothelle slung around him. In his left hand he holds a bread and water bag. This, and perhaps a few onions were often the only food Jewish merchants ate during their weekly wanderings in the absence of kosher food. The boy gives the Christian journeyman a coin, it is an allusion to Jewish charity. The father touches the mezuzah as he steps out. The scene is set in rural Hesse and is typical of the working world in rural Jewry. The title Moritz Oppenheim gave to this painting seems to be inspired by the 1851 novella of the same name by Leopold Kompert.

The last cloth merchant in Lorsch working in the old tradition was Johanna Oppenheimer (1871 – 1943) from Karlstraße 1, who remained unmarried. Hannchen, who was especially popular with Lorsch housewives, became a victim of the Shoa. In a business advertisement from 1919 she drew attention to her offer.

Text: Thilo Figaj, 2022