Bertha Pappenheim's Challenge to Martin Buber: Letters from a Pioneer of Jewish Education, Women’s Rights, and Social Work

This class explores the intellectual dialogue of two German Jewish luminaries, Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936) and Martin Buber (1878–1965) in the fateful decades prior to the Nazi period. We will have a look at unpublished letters Pappenheim wrote to Buber between 1916-1936 which now reside in the Buber Archive in Jerusalem. Pappenheim, a social worker, educator and activist, admired “Professor Buber"; she humbly read his books and always aspired to learn from him. She also criticized his thinking on key issues related to education, the Bible, the commandment to "Love thy neighbor," and the needs of Jewish women.

Come get to know Bertha Pappenheim – a heroine of the Lehrhaus—through her own words.

Abigail Gillman is Professor of Hebrew, German and Comparative Literature in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Boston University. She is a Core Faculty of at the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. She is the author of two books: Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann and Schnitzler (2009) and A History of German Jewish Bible Translation (2018). She is currently writing a book about the parable (mashal) across Jewish literature, from the Bible to Franz Kafka to Etgar Keret.