This PhD thesis focuses on the creation and maintenance of the liberal Jewish community in present day Cologne, Germany. The community has the telling name Gescher LaMassoret, which translates into „Bridge to Tradition.‟ The name gives away that this specific community, its individual members and its struggles cannot be understood without the socio-historic context of Germany and the Holocaust. Although this Jewish community is not a community of Holocaust survivors, the dichotomy Jewish-German takes various shapes within the community and surfaces in the narratives of the individual members. These narratives reflect the uniqueness of each individual in the community. While this is a truism, this individual uniqueness is a key element in Gescher LaMassoret, whose membership consists of people from various countries who have various native languages. Furthermore, the community comprises members of Jewish descent as well as Jews of conversion who are of German, non- Jewish parentage. Due to the aftermaths of the Holocaust and the fact that Gescher LaMassoret houses a vast internal diversity, the creation of this community which lacks any tradition happens through mixing and meshing the life-stories and other narratives of the members, which flow into the collective narrative of the community. On the surface, the narratives of the individual members seem in conflict, they even contradict each other, which means that the narrative of the community is in constant tension. However, under the dissimilarities on the surface of the individual narratives hide similarities in terms of shared values and attitudes, which allow for enough overlaps to create a community by way of braiding a collective narrative, which offers the members to experience a 'felt ethnicity.'

This period of the history of the Jews in the Yemen was selected for study on account· of the richness of the material which is available. The sources used in this research for the study of the political, economic and social situation of the Jews in the Yemen may be divided into the following groups: 1. The MSS. A - Hebrew MSS. B Arabic MSS. The printed sources A - Hebrew printed B - Arabic printed sources c - European printed sources Trave1lers A - Contemporary travellers B - Modern travellers In addition to the Hebrew and Arabic sources we have a series of eye-witness reports from travellers who visited the Yemen during the last three centuries, and whose observations have had remarkable and enduring results. The information obtained from these sources is plentiful and of great interest and importance for the history of the Yemen in general and supplies us with personal observations on the people, both Arabs and Jews. Such journevs increased the volume of knowledge and broadened its horizons owing to the opportunities taken for study and investigation. Although these sources have been mentioned in both the footnotes and the bibliography, it would be worth mentioning them here to estimate their relative informative value. One of the most essential Hebrew sources on which we have relied most in this dissertation is Korot Ha-Zman, written by Habshush. All we can learn about Habshush must be gleaned from his own writings. He was primarily a coppersmith by profession and it was only in his later years that he took up writing. In the Spring of 1893, Habshush was occupied in writing his Hebrew account of the history of the Jews'in the Yemen. The Autumn of the same year he spent writing his account about his journey with Halevy.1 His decision to write his own works was perhaps partly due to the influence of the European travellers who spread culture among the Jews in the Yemen in the nineteenth century. But his method of writing and his bitter complaints against the treatment of Ha1evy.

The dissertation investigates the social, economic and religious aspects of Jewish life in the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire between the 4th century BCE and 8th century CE. This is the first study, which studies the social and religious life of the Jewish communities in the Balkans, as recoded in the epigraphic and archaeological material, and will provide scholars with much needed basis for further research in the field. The primary focus of my research is a historical analysis of the epigraphic and archaeological evidence regarding the Jewish communities in the Roman provinces of Pannonia Inferior, Dalmatia, Moesia, Thracia, Macedonia, Achaea and Crete. The work is arranged in the form a corpus of inscriptions with additional entries on the archaeological and literary evidence. The intention has been to include all Jewish inscriptions and archaeological remains from the Balkans, which are likely to date from before c.700 CE. The analysis concentrates on the language and content of the available inscriptions, the onomastic repertoire employed, the historical context of the Jewish archaeological remains and their relation to the non- Jewish archaeological material from the region. The results of my research are important for understanding the involvement of Jews in the city life and their civic status, the cultural interaction between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours and may define the local community organisation and background of Jewish settlement in the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire. In my commentaries I suggest that the social system of the Jewish communities in the Balkans was dependent upon the local public and economic situation in the Roman city but not determined by it.