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.

Tracing its history from Moses Mendelssohn to today, Alan Levenson explores the factors that shaped what is the modern Jewish Bible and its centrality in Jewish life today. The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible explains how Jewish translators, commentators, and scholars made the Bible a keystone of Jewish life in Germany, Israel and America. Levenson argues that German Jews created a religious Bible, Israeli Jews a national Bible, and American Jews an ethnic one. In each site, scholars wrestled with the demands of the non-Jewish environment and their own indigenous traditions, trying to balance fidelity and independence from the commentaries of the rabbinic and medieval world.

PaRDeS. Zeitschrift der Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e.V., möchte die fruchtbare und facettenreiche Kultur des Judentums sowie seine Berührungspunkte zur Umwelt in den unterschiedlichen Bereichen dokumentieren. Daneben dient die Zeitschrift als Forum zur Positionierung der Fächer Jüdische Studien und Judaistik innerhalb des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses sowie zur Diskussion ihrer historischen und gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung. PaRDeS. Journal of the Association of Jewish Studies e. V. The journal aims at documenting the fruitful and multifarious culture of Judaism as well as its relations to its environment within diverse areas of research. In addition, the journal is meant to promote Jewish Studies within academic discourse and discuss its historic and social responsibility.

A book of ethics by one of the first female Jewish writers

Volume 1: Translations of the Bible take place in the midst of tension between politics, ideology and power. With the theological authority of the book as God’s Word, not focusing on the process of translating is stating the obvious. Inclinations, fluency and zeitgeist play as serious a role as translators’ person, faith and worldview, as do their vocabulary, poetics and linguistic capacity. History has seen countless retranslations of the Bible. What are the considerations according to which Biblical retranslations are being produced in current, 21st century, contexts? From retranslations of the Hebrew Bible to those of the Old and New Testaments, to mutual influences of Christian and Jewish translational traditions – the papers collected here all deal with the question of what is to be [re]gained with the production of a new translation where, at times, many a previous one has already existed. Volume 2: Times are changing, and with them, the norms and notions of correctness. Despite a wide-spread belief that the Bible, as a “sacred original,” only allows one translation, if any, new translations are constantly produced and published for all kinds of audiences and purposes. The various paradigms marked by the theological, political, and historical correctness of the time, group, and identity and bound to certain ethics and axiomatic norms are reflected in almost every current translation project. Like its predecessor, the current volume brings together scholars working at the intersection of Translation Studies, Bible Studies, and Theology, all of which share a special point of interest concerning the status of the Scriptures as texts fundamentally based on the act of translation and its recurring character. It aims to breathe new life into Bible translation studies, unlock new perspectives and vistas of the field, and present a bigger picture of how Bible [re]translation works in society today.

Translations of the Bible take place in the midst of tension between politics, ideology and power. With the theological authority of the book as God’s Word, not focusing on the process of translating is stating the obvious. Inclinations, fluency and zeitgeist play as serious a role as translators’ person, faith and worldview, as do their vocabulary, poetics and linguistic capacity. History has seen countless retranslations of the Bible. What are the considerations according to which Biblical retranslations are being produced in current, 21st century, contexts? From retranslations of the Hebrew Bible to those of the Old and New Testaments, to mutual influences of Christian and Jewish translational traditions – the papers collected here all deal with the question of what is to be [re]gained with the production of a new translation where, at times, many a previous one has already existed.