Prof Raphael Gross (Director Leo Baeck Institute and Jewish Museum Frankfurt), and Daniel Wildmann (Deputy Director Leo Baeck Institute), have pleasure in inviting you to our forthcoming lecture:

15 May 2008, 7.00pm

PROF ROBIN JUDD


Circumcision and Jewish Identity in the Kaiserreich

This talk will consider the ways in which late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German deliberations about circumcision can help us understand the transformation of modern German Jewry. Examining the ways in which ritualized markings of difference served as guideposts to discussions concerning Jewish acculturation and state growth, Judd will analyze the impact these deliberations had on the formation of German state and Jewish communal policies and political strategies. According to Judd, diverse German interest groups, governments and Jewish communal leaders often looked to Jewish rites when they debated the nature and limits of religious and social tolerance. As participants in the ritual questions, they disputed the boundaries between German Jews and gentiles.

Robin Judd is an Associate Professor of Jewish and European History at the Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Professor Judd's manuscript, Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843-1933, was recently published by Cornell University Press (Autumn 2007). Her new project is Love at the Zero Hour: European War Brides, GI Husbands, and European Strategies for Reconstruction. Professor Judd has received several prominent grants & fellowships including a DAAD, Fulbright, NEH summer stipend & the Coca Cola grant for Critical Difference.

The lecture is organised by the LBI London and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt/Main in cooperation with the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at Sussex University.

Refreshments will be served after the lecture.

Venue: The Wiener Library, 4 Devonshire Street, London W1W 5BH.

Underground: Regents Park, Great Portland Street. Bus: C2, 18, 27, 30, 88, 135.

Admission is free but places are limited and must be reserved in advance by contacting the Leo Baeck Institute: email info@leobaeck.co.uk, or phone 020 7580 3493. Lectures begin promptly at 7pm. Latecomers may not be admitted.