Nordisk judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies
Nordisk judaistik/Scandinavian Jewish Studies aims at promoting Jewish studies in Scandinavia by publishing scholarly articles, surveys and documents, by reviewing recent literature, and compiling bibliographies.
The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)
Att synliggöra antirasismens blinda fläck
Copyright (c) 2025 Alexander Johansson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Lars M Andersson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring Jewish Country Houses in Sweden, 1760s-1960s
While much is known about Jews as economic actors, bearers of culture, and patrons in European cities between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, Jews as owners of country estates have until recently almost eluded investigation, even though some studies now have been pursued in different European contexts. This article marks a new approach within the field by presenting the results of the first systematic and quantitative historical study in Sweden. About a hundred country houses were owned by Jewish families from c. 1760 to c. 1960. Mostly, in the vicinity of cities where Jews were allowed to live until 1854, such as Stockholm, Gothenburg and Norrköping. Moreover, in 1850, Jews owned comparatively more country houses than the bourgeoisie in general. This study indicates that a plurality of Jewish identities was represented among the owners, and that social and economic assets possibly had a greater impact on Jewish country house acquisitions than did the regulations which were installed to prevent them.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mia Kuritzén Löwengart, Ulväng Göran https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The language history of Norwegian Jews – a neglected part of Nordic multilingualism
Over the past few decades, the history of Norwegian Jews has received increasing atten- tion from various academic disciplines, yet little has been done to explore the language practices of the group,which has held national minority status since 1999.The Jewish migrants that settled in Norway in the latter half of the nineteenth century brought with them a rich tapestry of multilingualism.This complexity – and its development throughout the twentieth century – has been briefly addressed in both scholarly and popular works, but systematic efforts to investigate these issues within a linguistic framework have only emerged in recent years.This paper synthesizes the preliminary findings on the linguistics aspects of the cultural history of Norwegian Jews and suggests viable avenues for further research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stian Hårstad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Pontus Rudberg, Olof Bortz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Antijudaisme, antisemittisme og modernitet: En analyse av Luthersk Ugeskrift 1877–1893
Artikkelen utforsker den ideologiske kombinasjonen av modernitetskritikk, antijuda- isme og antisemittisme, med utgangspunkt i det norske konservative og kristne tidsskriftet Luthersk Ugeskrift i tiden fra 1877 til 1893. Ukeskriftet var blant de mest uforsonlige stemmene i den samtidige mobiliseringen mot liberalisme, sosialisme, ateisme og andre moderne samfunnsstrømninger, men rettet også sitt skyts mot «den moderne jødedom». Var denne antijødiske retorikken simpelthen en videreføring av tradisjonelle, kirkelige holdninger til jødene, eller representerte den noe nytt? Og hvordan forholdt tidsskriftet seg til den organiserte politiske antisemittismen som vokste frem i samme periode? Et hovedfunn er at den antijødiske argumentasjon balanserte mellom tradisjonelle teologiske og moderne, situasjonsbestemte elementer. Den religiøse antijudaismen fungerte som et kulturelt og teologisk råmateriale, som ble anvendt i en samtidsorientert politisk polemikk rettet mot de sekulære sidene ved moderniteten. Med dette som utgangspunkt gikk tidsskriftet langt i å fremstille de antisemittiske bevegelsene på kontinentet som selvforsvarsbevegelser rettet mot «jødisk makt»
Copyright (c) 2025 Kjetil Braut Simonsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Om antijødisk rasisme i det svenske samfunnet
Copyright (c) 2025 Vibeke Moe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Political theology and Jewish political thought
Introduction to the Special Issue
Copyright (c) 2025 Ulrika Björk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A broken childhood: The memoir of an Austrian kindertransportee
Review of Lucie Widl (ed. Norbert Götz), From Kindertransport to Post­war Sweden: My Memories. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, The Institute of Contemporary History / Samtidshistoriska institutet, 2025. 85 pp.
Carl Schmitt and Martin Buber on the 'realization' of political form
This article discusses the Austrian-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s theopolitical challenge to the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s political theology of sovereignty, an until recently largely overlooked contribution to the long array of 20thcentury critical engagements with the Schmittean secularization theorem. Departing from Schmitt’s own distinction between formative spirit and substantive form, offered in his early writings on the Roman Catholic Church as political form, this article argues that Buber’s critical engagement with Schmitt’s political doctrine of sin simultaneously reveals the unorthodoxy of the latter’s theological analysis, as it provides a more fruitful way to bring a theologically informed reflection on human nature into dialogue with political thought. It concludes by suggesting that Buber’s theopolitical vision of the self-forming community allow us to imagine human association beyond the narrow confines of theories of state sovereignty.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sophie Sophie Bäärnhielm Pousette https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Konsten att skapa ett hål och sedan fylla det
Review of Andreas Gedin, Lycklig den som kan glömma. Ett liv i 1900­-talets Europa. Lund: Historiska Media, 2023. 420 pages.
Review of Kitty Millet, Kabbalah and Literature. London, New York & Delhi: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. ISBN 978-15-013-5970-5. 272 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Agata Bielik-Robson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Melancholia and its theopolitical discontents
English-born philosopher and sociologist Gillian Rose (1947-1995) and French Trotskyist activist and philosopher Daniel Bensaïd (1946-2010) were born a mere year apart. While their work departs from the respective strands of Western Marxism and its focus on aesthetics and philosophy versus a Trotskyist preoccupation with economics and politics, they both were interested in Walter Benjamin and his ideas of messianism, melancholy, and Judaism in the early nineties. This article argues that Rose and Bensaïd’s heterodox Jewish identities in their respective memoirs parallel their Jewish-inflected dialectical containers for Benjamin’s melancholy. It effectively stages imagined fictive meeting between the two thinkers in which they discuss their disagreements about Benjamin as melancholically politically disengaged (Rose) or revitalizing Marxism through a melancholy messianic wager (Bensaïd).
Copyright (c) 2025 Rachel Pafe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article probes the writings of the Jewish Trotskyist thinker Daniel Bensaïd (1946–2010) in light of recent debates on political theology. In contrast to what is sometimes explicitly referred to as ‘apocalyptic political theology’, it makes a case for what may be described as a ‘prophetic political theology’. Yet it is not obvious to claim Bensaïd as a proponent for such a project, since he explicitly denounced the meddling of theology in political thinking. The article therefore starts out by explaining the sense in which Bensaïd was committed to the profane nature of politics. Secondly, it suggests that Bensaïd’s ‘profane politics’ could nonetheless be framed as a political theology. Despite his rejection of theology, Bensaïd simultaneously drew on a certain strand of Jewish prophetic thinking in his continuing revision and refinement of his original Trotskyist position. Having explored Bensaïd’s radical thinking as a prophetic political theology, the article concludes by indicating why and how it offers a productive way of responding to the challenges of our time.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jayne Svenungsson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In his dissertation on Hegel’s conception of the State (1920), Franz Rosenzweig highlighted the role of Christianity in Hegel’s conception of the emergence of the universal. In is subsequent magnum opus, Der Stern der Erlösung (1921), a corner-stone in the history of modern Jewish thought, he is driven by the aspiration to rethink the relation between Christianity and Judaism, and to re-inscribe the Jewish historical experience into the history of world spirit. Thus he approaches the problem of the universal from a standpoint that involves a rethinking of the theological underpinning of Hegel’s system. The article explores how this is carried out through a new sense of time and temporality, epitomized through his repeated references to the temporality of the Augenblick, the “moment”. Taking his cue from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, he transforms this key concept from its Christian and existential significance, to designate a particular Jewish experience, of confessional life in exile, as a theological politics beyond the state, and even beyond history in its standard chronological sense.
Rosenzweig, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, temporality, Augenblick, redemption, state
Copyright (c) 2025 Hans Ruin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
As author I naturally cannot object to any criticism of my work in the review. Nevertheless, it contains some elements which cannot be considered scholarly criticism but simple accusations. Since these are not corroborated by any evidence such as quotations from my book or pertain to the category of argumentum e silentio I consider it justified to make two corrections, since the accusations do not deal with scholarly flaws in my study and cast a shadow on my moral integrity as regards my stance in questions concerning antisemitism.
Copyright (c) 2025 Risto Nurmela https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Agencies, assemblages and affective traces
Review of Victoria Van Orden Martínez, Afterlives: Jewish and Non­Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945–1946. Ph.D. thesis, Linköping University, 2023. 278 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Matylda Jonas-Kowalik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Ruth Illman; Svante Lundgren, Olof Bortz, Pontus Rudberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of Carl Henrik Carlsson, Integration mot alla odds? En longitudinell kohortstudie av östjudars barn i Sverige, 1880–1920. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Jewish Studies 2. ISBN 978-91-513-2158-5. 165 pp.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jens Carlesson Magalhães https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
An obituary for Tapani Harviainen (1944–2024).
Copyright (c) 2024 Riikka Tuori, Simo Muir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
An obituary for Salomon Schulman (1947-2024)
Copyright (c) 2024 Lars M Andersson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Thorough Examination of Bosnia's Antisemitic History
Book review of Antisemitic Discourse and Historical Amnesia in Bosnia: The Case of Mustafa Busuladžić. Kjell Magnusson. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala Jewish Studies, 2024.
Copyright (c) 2024 Evin Ismail https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Historiska perspektiv på judiska kvinnors berättelser om erfarenheter av antisemitism i Sverige under 1900-talet och 2000-talet
This article adopts a historical perspective to explore Jewish women’s experiences of anti­ semitism in Sweden. The empirical foundation of the study comprises interviews with approximately thirty women born in the 1950s, 1970s or 1990s, all of whom self­identify as Jewish. Employing a dialogical epistemology rooted in intersectionality and shared authority, the study emphasises both the content of the women’s life­stories and the ways they interpret and articulate their experiences. A key finding of this study is that the fear of antisemitism is a persistent presence in the lives of most participants. A notable continuity over time is the school, which emerges as a recurring site where Jewish women have experienced a sense of being different. However, there is a generational shift in how these experiences are interpreted. Women born in the 1990s are more likely to identify such experiences explicitly as antisemitism, compared to those born in the 1950s or 1970s. Another significant conclusion is that understanding Jewish women’s stories about antisemitism requires these accounts to be situated within broader relational contexts, encompassing both their own and others’ experiences as well as both contemporary and historical processes. Past experiences are often reactivated by current events, such as the attack of 7 October 2023. There is also a before and after 7 October. After 7 October, the fear of antisemitism increased, and some women describe the fear as constant or existential. A general conclusion in the article is that the fear of antisemitism is present in most of the women's lives. A continuity over time is that the school is a place where Jewish women have experienced that they are different. Women born in the 1990s interpret these experiences to a greater extent, than the women born in the 1950’s and the 19970’s, as an experience of antisemitism. In this respect, our results differ from previous international research showing that older people in particular experience and regard society as antisemitic, while younger people do not do so to the same extent. A further conclusion is that to understand women's narratives about experiences of antisemitism, these should also be understood in relation to the experiences of others both in the present and in the past, since these form layer upon layer of experiences that are actualized by current events such as October 7. There is also a before and after October 7. After 7 October, the feeling of insecurity has increased, and some women describe the fear as constant or existential.
Copyright (c) 2024 Malin Thor Tureby, Emma Hall https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
En upptäcktsfärd i Europas judiska 1800-tal
Review of Eva Ekselius: 'Vakna mitt folk!' Det judiska Europa mellan den franska revolutionen och den ryska. Volante 2023.
Copyright (c) 2024 Anders Hammarlund https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This study analyses Jewish reactions to anti-Zionism in Norway, from the 1967 Six-Day War to the 1982 Israel–Lebanon War, focusing on the shifting political climate towards Israel. Using archival records, press materials and interviews with Jewish community activists, it explores how they defined and countered antisemitism in relation to Israel’s legitimacy. Applying Stuart Hall’s representations theory, and Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities, the study shows how solidarity with Israel marked an additional sense of belonging, giving its defenders agency and something to fight for. As Norwegians, activists asserted inclusion in the national community by opposing antisemitism and defending democratic values. As Zionists, they subscribed to a group that was being attacked and needed defending. The study finds that methods used to combat anti-Zionism resembled those employed against antisemitism. Yet attempts to discredit anti-Zionism failed, furthering the confusion on the boundaries of antisemitism.
Copyright (c) 2024 Noa Ben David https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Yizkor books are memorial books commemorating Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, which are also the result of communal activity. The books have been published since 1943, mostly in Israel. Based on a qualitative and quantitative survey of 613 books, the largest survey of Yizkor books done to date, this article repositions the books linguistically and geographically. It demonstrates that contrary to previous research, Yizkor books are a significantly more heterogeneous phenomenon that began in the Yiddish­-speaking world but quickly changed into an Israeli­- and Hebrew­-based phenomenon, which also included Jews from non­-Yiddish­-speaking Ashkenazi, and even Sephardic, communities. Especially since the 1980s, the phenomenon further evolved to include more English­-language books, published in the USA. Against this geographical and linguistic backdrop, I also show that the producers of the books were a diverse array of groups and individuals from varying backgrounds. The publishers were not only Yiddish­-speaking landsmanschaftn (Jewish mutual­-aid societies consisting of individuals originating from a particular place and their descendants) but a variety of organizations of different kinds, individuals, and even schoolchildren. Finally, I present examples of Yizkor books that were presented in previous research as landsmanschaft literature produced by Holocaust survivors and show that these assumptions regarding the authors are partially or wholly erroneous and that those books were, in fact, produced by a different set of actors.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lior Becker https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of Helmut Müssener & Michael F. Scholz: Die jüdische Emigrantenselbsthilfe in Stockholm (1939-1973). Hilfe durch Selbsthilfe, De Gruyter, Oldenburg, 2023.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lars Dencik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
"They absolutely don’t want you to progress here"
Fascism and Nazi ideology cast a threatening shadow over Finland during its troubled 1930s. This manifested as antisemitism towards the few Jewish students pursuing higher degrees at Finnish universities. One glaring instance of discrimination involved our father, Leo Skurnik, whose advancement in his academic career was blocked at the Helsinki University Department of Medical Chemistry in the late 1930s. In this treatise, we aim to delve deeper into the challenges he faced and how they were intertwined with the antisemitic sentiments prevailing at that time.
Copyright (c) 2024 Samuli Skurnik, Mikael Skuyrnik https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of Risto Nurmela: Sigmund Freud und sein Bekenntnis zum Judesein in ’Der Mann Moses und die monoteistische Religion’. Wien: Lit Verlag, 2023.
Copyright (c) 2024 Hans Ruin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Teater på jiddisch – i Sverige och i världen
Review of Sylvia Sauter & Willmar Sauter: Teater på jiddisch – i Sverige och i världen. Stockholm: Gidlunds förlag, 2023.
Copyright (c) 2024 Simo Muir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0