Synchrone Welten

Text in German. With Synchrone Worlds a new series of the Leipzig Simon Dubnow Institute is starting, which presents essays on Jewish history and culture. The first volume, edited by Dan Diner, director of the institute, brings together a series of studies that deal with the specifics of the East Central European Jewish experience of history. Here, as in all other volumes in this series, questions of Jewish history are always presented in the context of general history, as experiences of a non-territorial population group in the age of nation-state and nationalism. Dan Diner's reflections on the "sacred sense of time" as it is contained in "Toldot", the Hebrew term for "history", introduce the volume. The other contributions deal with micrologically processed epoch issues of Jewish history in the tension between premodern institutions and modern integration expectations. It reflects on diasporic forms of life, phenomena of mobility, migration and urbanity, as well as metaphors of Jewish existence in the modern age. The series is continued with essays on "Luftmenschentum" (Nicolas Berg) and "Jewish diplomacy" (Markus Kirchhoff).