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The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to offer a three-year PhD scholarship for an outstanding doctoral candidate wishing to pursue a research project in the field of German-Jewish history and culture with a focus on the 20th century.

Applications are invited from current and prospective master’s graduates with an excellent academic track record.

The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the home fee rate (£4,786 in 2024-25) and a stipend (£21,237 per year for 2024-25) for up to three years. 

The recipient of this scholarship will be based at the School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London. 

To apply for this scholarship, you will need to apply for a History MPhil/PhD on the Birkbeck website by 7 August 2024. Please select ‘History MPhil/PhD: 4 years full-time, on campus, starting 2024-25’ and specify in your research proposal that you wish to be…

The writings of Dutch Auschwitz survivors Eddy de Wind, Elie Cohen and Louis Micheels merit analysis not only because they anticipated what later became known as PTSD and much of the underpinnings of trauma theory. They also advocated a theory of survival that offers a compelling contrast to well-known “self-help” theories put forward by Bruno Bettelheim and, especially, Viktor Frankl. This lecture traces the ways in which this theory of survival challenged these simplistic narratives, explains how their work informed the changing field of psychiatry after the war, and considers its relevance for the historiography of the Holocaust today. 

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he has taught since 1999. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including, most recently, The Holocaust: An Unfinished History (Penguin, 2023)…

Last Thursday, the Leo Baeck Institute London, in collaboration with the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (BISA), hosted a workshop titled “Jewish Refugees in the British Empire, 1933–1948” at Senate House, University of London. The event was led by renowned historian Professor Atina Grossmann from The Cooper Union, NYC.

The one-day workshop aimed to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarly exchange on the experiences of Jewish refugees in the British Empire before, during, and after the Holocaust. Scholars from various fields gathered to discuss and analyse the complex history and narratives of Jewish displacement and resettlement within the British Empire during a turbulent period marked by widespread persecution and global conflict.

Professor Grossmann, a leading expert in the history of Holocaust refugees, delivered the keynote address. Sessions throughout the day included presentations and roundtable discussions, with topics ranging from…

Can women hold rabbinical office? This was one of the questions discussed at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, Berlin, in the 1920s and 1930s. And no one was better suited to provide an answer to this than Regina Jonas, a student at the Higher Institute who became the first female rabbi in the world in 1935. Prior to her ordination, Jonas answered the question about women’s access to the rabbinate in a halachic treatise that she submitted in 1930 as her final halachic project. Her biographer, Rabbi Prof Dr Elisa Klapheck, will share insights into a life that inspired a new kind of women’s participation in Jewish religious practice. This lecture explores the work of a determined woman who was passionate about Judaism and who was also beloved by the people whom she served in Nazi Germany and after her deportation to Theresienstadt camp in 1942. Regina Jonas was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944; her work still resonates today.

Rabbi Prof Dr…

Samuel David Luzzatto’s Synonymia Hebraica (Mavdil Nirdafim) (c. 1815–1820) is a remarkable manuscript smuggled out of Germany by Alexander Guttmann in 1940. 

This beautifully bound notebook contains 25 essays in Hebrew, each exploring groups of words in the Bible with similar or identical meanings. All but one essay were later published in the journals Bikkurei Ha-Ittim (1825–1828) and Jeschurun (1856).  

What makes this item unique are the author’s corrections and notes in the margins, written in ink, crayon and pencil. It is thus a fascinating testament to the editing process. This item is on permanent loan to the Leo Baeck College Library from the Judaica Conservancy Foundation. 

See whole book here: https://www.leobaeck.co.uk/research/library-lost-books-britain 

Germany is home to Europe’s third largest Jewish community. Yet surprisingly little is known about them. After the Shoah, about 15,000 German Jews returned to Germany or emerged from hiding. The growth of the Jewish population in Germany after 1945 was due entirely to immigration, which is somewhat counter intuitive. Who are the Jews who live in contemporary Germany? How do they live out their Jewishness? What Jewish cultures did they bring with them, and what kind of Jewish culture is forming in Germany? 

Dani Kranz is the incumbent DAAD Humboldt chair at El Colegio de México, Mexico City, and an applied anthropologist and director of Two Foxes Consulting, Germany and Israel. Her expertise covers migration, integration, ethnicity, law, state/stateliness, political life, organisations, memory cultures and politics as well as cultural heritage.

This event is organised in collaboration with the British-German Association (BGA)…

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