Abraham Berlin Center

The ABC was officially founded on April 21, 2015 at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Abraham Berliner (May 1, 1833 - April 21, 1915). Abraham Berliner is representative of those Jewish scholars in Germany who carried out groundbreaking research in the field of Semitic languages and the textual and interpretative traditions of the Hebrew Bible, including the Targumim, but who never found a secure academic framework for this research in Germany, either before 1933 or after 1945. The Abraham Berliner Center was founded in memory of this branch of Jewish scholarship. At the same time, it is committed to intensively continuing and promoting this philological and historical Jewish academic culture in Germany.

The work of the Abraham Berliner Center focuses on research into the textual and interpretative traditions of the Hebrew Bible, with particular emphasis on Masora and Targum research. On the one hand, this is done through the editorial processing of the comprehensive Bible manuscripts and the Western European commentary literature, which was begun by Abraham Berliner and other representatives of Jewish scholarship at the time and has not yet been completed to any extent. On the other hand, classical philological basic research is supplemented by the integration of current research projects on Bible, Targum and commentary literature with a focus on cultural and religious studies.

The Abraham Berliner Center is based at the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies and maintains academic cooperation with researchers from all over the world, especially from Israel, France and the USA. From the very beginning, there has been close professional and personal cooperation with the Faculty of Philosophy at Heidelberg University. The Abraham Berlin Center supervises international and national third-party funded projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) and others, organizes international conferences and workshops and promotes exchange with researchers from Germany and abroad, also and above all in cooperation with Heidelberg University and the Research Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology (FIIT) at Heidelberg University. The Abraham Berlin Center is open to the public as host of the regular Abraham Berlin Research Colloquia.