ABSTRACT
The resurgence of Jewish cultural and organizational life in Germany in the early twentieth century is commonly recognized as the last creative moment in the history of Jews in German-speaking lands. Although a break with the dominant reception of East European Jewish culture, this championing of David Pinski bears the hallmarks of neo Romantic politics and aesthetics. The positive cultural response to the East European Jews is confined largely to those active in the Jewish renaissance in one form or another. Martin Buber emphasizes again and again in his Hasidic works the raw, unrefined, fragmentary, and corrupt nature of the original documents. The German-Jewish renaissance, in its longing for community, authenticity, and tradition, was most influenced by a romanticized, sentimental version of East European Jewish life. The approach to Yiddish and its translation is part of a wider discursive field of German Jewry at the time, which it is affected by and in turn affects.
