Another West European Jewish Gaze

Abstract

The Bar Kochba circle in Prague has been one of the centers of the European Jewish renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among its members there are figures who occupied not irrelevant roles within the Zionist movement, in particular for what refers to its journalistic, teaching, and cultural activity. The importance of this small group is mainly related to the lectures Buber delivered as its guest between 1910 and 1911, and to the anthology Vom Judentum (1913), which in many ways epitomized the strive toward Jewish culture of an entire generation before the outbreak of the first world war. Much scholarly work has been dedicated to Bar Kochba in recent years. Research has been focusing in particular on the völkisch roots of this Jewish cultural renaissance, on the specific situation of Prague Jews and their positioning in the conflict between Czech and German nationalisms, and on transfer of knowledge and (mainly) political ideas between Europe and Palestine. However, it should be remarked that the historian facing the task of writing the history of Bar Kochba is confronted by a serious challenge. Whereas the period from 1908, starting with the leadership of Leo Herrmann (1888–1951), offers a relatively good amount of primary sources to draw upon, work on the early years of Bar Kochba have been based so far almost exclusively on a very restricted number of documents, – mainly memories by formers members of the group, which nevertheless, drafted about fifty/sixty years afterwards, not always prove to be accurate. A biographical approach focused on Hugo Bergmann (1883–1975), one of the main protagonists of the beginnings of Bar Kochba, may help to gain a new vantage point over the early history of the group. Through his letters, notes, and early publications it is possible to concentrate on the emergence of the Jewish