Overview

Between 1780 and 1937, Jews in Germany produced numerous new translations of the Hebrew Bible into German. Intended for Jews who were trilingual, reading Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, they were meant less for religious use than to promote educational and cultural goals. Not only did translations give Jews vernacular access to their scripture without Christian intervention, but they also helped showcase the Hebrew Bible as a work of literature and the foundational text of modern Jewish identity. This book is the first in English to offer a close analysis of German Jewish translations as part of a larger cultural project. Looking at four distinct waves of translations, Abigail Gillman juxtaposes translations within each that sought to achieve similar goals through differing means. As she details the history of successive translations, we gain new insight into the opportunities and problems the Bible posed for different generations and gain a new perspective on modern German Jewish history.

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Reviews

...without doubt one of the most learned and eloquent books in her interdisciplinary field and one of the most profound reflections on the Jewish encounter with modernity. It is a multi-layered book that will excite the novice and the expert alike, and that will speak to us for time to come. Finally, it is a book that resembles an intricate work of art deserving nothing less than the title of a masterpiece. --Asher D. Biemann The German Quarterly Abigail Gilman's...is the first full-fledged book to offer a history of German Jewish bible translation as a whole...Gillman's discussion seems to leave little untouched: from comparative textual analysis, through the paratextual level of introductions, commentary, and visual aspects, on to the biographies of the translator, their cultural environment, both Jewish and (too often neglected in previous studies) Christian, up to the contemporary reception and later legacies. --Ran HaCohen Shofar Abigail Gillman's work is a major scholarly achievement, indeed probably the most comprehensive study to date of the 170-year tradition of Jewish Bible translations into German. Gillman's history is at the same time an important contribution to our understanding of the unique German-Jewish encounter in modernity, that is, of the philosophical, literary, cultural, and linguistic junction that brought to the world the likes of Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Else Lasker-Schuler, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan, to name only a few luminaries. I am hard pressed to think of another book that brings together such a thorough consideration of Biblical translation across languages and cultures. --Amir Eshel, Stanford University A History of German Jewish Bible Translation is important because the subject of Bible translations is a key to the mentalite of German Jewry since Moses Mendelssohn. With a novel handle on a complex body of literature, Professor Gillman has crafted an original conceptual grid to overcome the atomized character of eleven distinct translations that, until now, have defied treatment by a single scholar. Gillman's goal is not to discuss all translations, but rather to highlight the endless effort by German Jews to cultivate their religious identity in a Christian body politic deeply ambivalent about their integration. --Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary

Abigail Gillman's work is a major scholarly achievement, indeed probably the most comprehensive study to date of the 170-year tradition of Jewish Bible translations into German. Gillman's history is at the same time an important contribution to our understanding of the unique German-Jewish encounter in modernity, that is, of the philosophical, literary, cultural, and linguistic junction that brought to the world the likes of Moses Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Else Lasker-Sch ler, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs, and Paul Celan, to name only a few luminaries. I am hard pressed to think of another book that brings together such a thorough consideration of Biblical translation across languages and cultures. --Amir Eshel, Stanford University A History of German Jewish Bible Translation is important because the subject of Bible translations is a key to the mentalit of German Jewry since Moses Mendelssohn. With a novel handle on a complex body of literature, Professor Gillman has crafted an original conceptual grid to overcome the atomized character of eleven distinct translations that, until now, have defied treatment by a single scholar. Gillman's goal is not to discuss all translations, but rather to highlight the endless effort by German Jews to cultivate their religious identity in a Christian body politic deeply ambivalent about their integration. --Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Theological Seminary

Author Information

Abigail Gillman is associate professor of Hebrew, German, and comparative literature at Boston University and the acting director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. She is the author of Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, andSchnitzler.

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