Jüdische Siedlungsformen: Überlegungen zu ihrer Bedeutung

This is a chapter in a handbook on European-Jewish history. The idea of the contribution was to research and analyze Jewish forms of settlement – Jewish Streets in medieval towns, Ghettos, the “Shtetl” in Eastern Europe, the Jewish Quarters of big cities, the new settlements in Israel – as representations of different identity constructions which differ in time and space and which are informed by various religious, political and economical factors. Any given form of settlement reflects a Jewish community’s feeling and practice of “longing and belonging”, it also reflects the tension between a diasporic existence and the traditional – but changing – relationship to the land of Israel. Even medieval ghettoes were not completely isolated, patterns of cultural contact and cultural conflict have an impact on the outer form of a “Jewish Street”, the place of a synagogue or a cemetery – in relation to the built world (and the laws) of the non-Jewish neighbourhood. A study of the meaning of forms of settlement is also a study in Jewish/non-Jewish relations