Department of Jewish Studies
Thanks to Kurt Schubert, the first beginnings of Jewish Studies were made in Vienna in 1945, and a professorship and department were established in 1966. For us, Jewish Studies has several tasks:
- To research Jewish history, literature and religion from its beginnings to the present day,
- to provide Jews and non-Jews with a comprehensive and well-founded picture of Judaism in all its facets,
- to inform about Judaism through research and teaching and thus to prevent new anti-Semitism in its beginnings and to reduce prejudices.
In our research, we set accents that clearly distinguish and characterize Viennese Jewish Studies internationally. In our teaching, we place particular emphasis on the mastery of the Hebrew language, as well as on knowledge of the cultural, religious and literary traditions of Judaism in its many forms.
AGJÖ
The Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna is a member of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Jüdische Studien in Österreich (AGJÖ), an informal association of university and non-university institutions involved in the research, publication and teaching of Jewish history and culture that was founded in 2008. The working group serves the regular exchange of our projects, the joint planning of conferences, projects and publications as well as the discussion of topics and methods. The biannual meetings are open to all employees of the participating institutions.
In addition to our department, the members of the AGJÖ are the Institute for Jewish History in Austria (INJOEST; www.injoest.ac.at), the Center for Jewish Studies at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz (CJS; www.uni-graz.at/cjs-graz/) and the Center for Jewish Cultural History at the University of Salzburg (ZJK; www.uni-salzburg.at/zjk).