Der Jude

During its eight-year existence, this journal became the most important intellectual forum of modern German Jewry. Seen above are the first two issues of this monthly journal, which was twelve years in the making. Buber, who grew up in Galicia but was part of German Jewish intellectual circles like co-founder SY Agnon, wanted to present a forum where East European writers and German Jewish readers could meet on neutral ground. Although De Jude was clearly Zionist in orientation, its main goal was to further promote the regional encounter exemplified in Ost und West with the hope to overcome deep divisions between Eastern and German Jewry. A decade after Buber had introduced the Ostjuden as a literary figure, he strove to present the real lives of East European Jews in his journal by publishing statistics and accounts of contemporary political developments in their homelands.