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ZAKHORIUM

Date

1913CE

1913–1933

Schools, encyclopedias, and theaters invented a secular Judaism after assimilation.

Art and cultureJewish philosophyReligious history50.1000°N 8.6750°E
A World Upended: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

14 statements

01Return and post-assimilatory identity

03

Scholem left Germany for Palestine in 1923 and turned to mystical texts.

04

Kafka criticized his father's formal Judaism, limited to a few days in synagogue.

05

Rosenzweig and Buber prepared a new German translation of the Hebrew Bible.

06

Secularized Jews built new identities instead of copying intact traditions.

02Lehrhaus and encyclopedias

01

Rosenzweig founded the Lehrhaus in Frankfurt in 1920 as an adult school.

07

Teaching reversed the traditional path: from life back toward Torah.

08

In 1913, Rosenzweig abandoned conversion after Yom Kippur in Kassel.

02

Weimar produced the Jüdisches Lexikon and an Encyclopaedia Judaica that stopped at L.

03Berlin, YIVO, and languages

09

In the early 1920s, Berlin gathered Bialik, Berdichevsky, Greenberg, and Agnon.

10

The chapter places YIVO's founding in Berlin in 1925, with later homes in Vilna and New York; the book's timeline records the founding in Vilna.

11

Polish Jewish culture circulated in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew.

12

In the 1931 census, 80 percent declared Yiddish, 12 percent Polish, and 8 percent Hebrew; the chapter warns that these figures are not a true reflection of linguistic reality, especially for Hebrew.

04Salzburg and Vienna

Hofmannsthal, Reinhardt, and Strauss opened the Salzburg Festival in 1920. Hugo Bettauer, author of a Vienna without Jews, was killed by a Nazi in 1925.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
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§ 02Museum

Objects and images

Each item states whether it is an ancient object, a modern photograph or a later artistic interpretation.

§ 03Historiography

What scholars debate

Positions shown side by side, unranked, as the source reports them. The source’s own assessment appears separately.

Scholarly debate · 01

Did the return to Judaism repeat tradition?

2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →

  1. A

    Authentic recovery

    Declared aim of the Lehrhaus

    Classical texts were relearned in earnest.

  2. B

    Modern invention

    Chapter description

    The model was the German adult school, not the old study house.

§ 04Network

Connections

    § 05Bibliography

    Further reading

    No specific reading recorded for this event.

    § 06Apparatus

    Sources on this page

    1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 394inspect
    2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 394inspect
    3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 393inspect
    4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 393inspect
    5. 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 393inspect
    6. 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 393inspect
    7. 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 394inspect
    8. 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 394inspect
    9. 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 395inspect
    10. 10Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 395inspect
    11. 11Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 395inspect
    12. 12Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 395inspect
    13. 13Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 396inspect
    14. 14Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 397inspect
    • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
    • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
    • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
    • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
    • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.