Yerushalmi’s Germany

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi came late to Germany, but he developed a close, almost intimate relationship to it during the last fifteen years of his life. After staying in Munich for a year in 1996–97 he returned regularly. He was able to enjoy the positive responses to German translations of his works and met colleagues who engaged with his ideas. It was here that his first collection of essays appeared, and some of his publications, such as his contribution to the debate on Jewish historiography at a Schloss Elmau conference, appeared only in German. His fascination with German society was founded in his admiration for German culture and language and for such diverse figures as Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, as well as in his attempt to understand more deeply the causes of the Jewish catastrophe of the twentieth century.