The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate

German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933–2010

Cornelia Wilhelm

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780253070210
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

After the Nazi seizure of power on January 30, 1933, over 250 German rabbis, rabbinical scholars, and students for the rabbinate fled to the United States. The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate follows their lives and careers over decades in America.

Although culturally uprooted, the group's professional lives and intellectual leadership, particularly those of the younger members of this group, left a considerable mark intellectually, socially, and theologically on American Judaism and on American Jewish congregational and organizational life in the postwar world.

Meticulously researched and representing the only systematic analysis of prosopographical data in a digital humanities database, The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate reveals the trials of those who had lost so much and celebrates the legacy they made for themselves in America.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Understanding the “Last Generation of the German Rabbinate”
• 1. German Jewry under Nazism: Changes and Challenges for the Rabbinical Profession
• 2. Rescue and Flight: Scholars and Students—And a Visa That Saved Lives
• 3. Flight and Rescue: Rabbis—And a Visa That Saved Lives
• 4. The Refugees’ First Years in the United States: Employment, Settlement, Congregations, and the Encounter with American Society and American Judaism
• 5. Careers Lost and Found: Paths of Professional Success and Failure and the Making of the “Last Generation of the German Rabbinate”
• 6. Refugee Returns: Transatlantic Encounters and the Legacy of the “Last Generation of the German Rabbinate”
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author