Miriam Gillis-Carlebach Fellowship

Neben der Förderung von Forschung und Lehre zur jüdischen Geschichte, Kultur und Religion in der Hansestadt Hamburg ist der wissenschaftliche Austausch zwischen Deutschland und Israel ein zentrales Anliegen des Carlebach-Arbeitskreises. Durch die Einrichtung eines Fellowships, das Nachwuchswissenschaftler:innen einen Forschungsaufenthalt in Hamburg ermöglicht, soll der wissenschaftliche Austausch durch ein weiteres Förderformat gestärkt werden.

In Erinnerung an Miriam Gillis-Carlebach (1922–2020) schreibt der CAK deshalb seit 2023 das Miriam Gillis-Carlebach Fellowship aus, um innovative wissenschaftliche Projekte im Feld der Jüdischen Studien zu fördern und den wissenschaftlichen Austausch zwischen Deutschland und Israel weiter zu vertiefen. Das Fellowship richtet sich an Nachwuchswissenschaftler:innen (Promovierende und PostDocs) bis 7 Jahre nach der Dissertation, die zu den Arbeitsbereichen des CAK forschen und die reichhaltige Fachbibliothek oder die Bestände in den verschiedenen Archiven der Stadt und Region für ihre Studien nutzen wollen. Es ermöglicht einen bis zu dreimonatigen Forschungsaufenthalt in Hamburg

Carlebach Fellowship 2024: Margarita Lerman

In Loopholes and Gray Areas. A Cross-Border History of Delinquent Jewish Networks, 1820–1914

July–October 2024

The project of modernity is closely intertwined with changing perceptions of and opportunities for the mobility of people and the movement of goods. Indeed, much has been written about Jewish politicians, businesspeople, and community leaders who took advantage of this newfound mobility for social advancement, leaving behind their mostly precarious living conditions in Eastern Europe. Yet the extent to which this mobility offered occasions for Jewish men and women to carry out enterprises outside the normative confines of the law still widely remains in the dark.
This PhD project explores illegal Jewish cooperation during the 19th century in the Russian and Austrian Empire as well as at migration destinations overseas. Considering activities in legal loopholes, gray areas, and plain illegality at the height of modernity a revealing expression of Jews’ scopes of action as well as of their understandings of rights and belonging, it uncovers the modi operandi of illicit networks in the realm of theft, smuggling, illegal migration, and counterfeiting. As an important transit center, Hamburg constituted a place of encounter between lawmakers, police officers, and Jewish men and women on their diverse journeys, and thereby illuminates intersections of (il)legality and normativity that are central to my PhD dissertation. By giving the protagonists and their ways of collaboration center stage, my project aspires to offer a social understanding of transnational Jewish enterprises outside the normative boundaries of legality that allows to complement current perspectives on assimilation, globalization, and mobility.

Margarita Lerman is a PhD Candidate at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Study in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an Affiliated Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow in Leipzig. Before beginning her PhD in 2021, she studied Translation (B. A.), Conference Interpreting (M. A.), and European Studies (M. A.) at the universities of Leipzig, Concepción (Chile), and Havana (Cuba).

Carlebach Fellowship 2023: Naama Jager-Fluss

From Haskalah to Religious Reform: Eduard Kley (1789–1867) as a Transitional Figure

July – September 2023

One of the founders of the Hamburg Temple in 1818 and the principal of „Die Israelitische Freischule in Hamburg“ since 1817, Dr. Eduard Kley was a committed educator. His educational vision was, in his own words: „Der Hauptzweck und Mittelpunkt alles Bestrebens bei dieser Schulanstalt soll für immer bleiben: die Kinder zu sittlich- und religiös-guten Menschen zu bilden, sie zu brauchbaren Gliedern der Gesellschaft zu machen, damit sie in ihrem künftigen Berufe geschickt und fleissig seien in guten Werken“ (Jonas, 1859).
In the first decade of the 19th century, Kley lived in Berlin. Upon finishing his academic studies, he began to work as a private tutor for some local Jewish families. Following his appointment as a school principal in Hamburg, his ideology and pedagogic vision evolved and shifted from a Haskalah-centered outlook to Jewish religious reform.
The research project is dedicated to overviewing the persona, writings, and lifelong work of Eduard Kley as a key figure in the transition from the Haskalah to Jewish reform at the beginning of the 19th century in Germany. I believe that a scholarly focus on Kley will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the history of the Jewish Reform movement, especially in its early, pioneering stages. The study will thus focus on the crucial period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in order to trace the manifold connections between the Haskalah and the Reform movement in German Jewry.

Naama Jager-Fluss is a scholar of Jewish History with a special focus on 19th century Europe. She received her M.A. from Bar Ilan University in 2017 and her PhD from Bar Ilan University in 2022. Her articles on the Jewish Reform Movement and on Gotthold Salomon were published in the journals Tabur, Chidushim and Reshit.