Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center Fellowship Program

Call for Applications

The Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem will award doctoral and postdoctoral research fellowships for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Fellowship Theme:

Individual and Collective in German-Jewish Life and Culture

The course of emancipation in Germany, and its aftermath over the long 19th Century, offered German Jews opportunities to determine their individual and collective identities in new ways. The Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center invites applications for doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships for the 2026-2027 academic year, devoted to research on the theme of individual and collective in German-Jewish life and culture. Our intention is to bring together scholars from a myriad of disciplinary perspectives, including history, philosophy, literature, religious studies, and political theory, whose different perspectives will engender fruitful research and scholarly discussion. Towards this end, we seek researchers exploring the political and social lives of German Jews, and the forms of Jewish communal organization in 19th- and early 20th- Century Germany. Projects in this direction might explore the struggles between orthodox and liberal German Jews in determining communal authority, or the roles Jewish intellectuals and social leaders played in formulating visions of ideal social collectives, whether socialist, Zionist, and/or utopian. We likewise seek scholars posing questions regarding the relative importance of individual and collective in German-Jewish religious life and thought; one might consider, in this regard, a study of conceptions of revelation in German-Jewish religious thought, as authoritative law dictating collective Jewish practices, as universal ethical teaching, or as divine address to the Jewish individual and his or her conscience. We seek scholars of German-Jewish literature, for example, those who study literary representations of Jewish communal life (from the nostalgic to the contemporary), or of expressionist or stream-of-consciousness depictions of the inner life of the Jewish subject. And we invite scholars who analyze the place of individual and collective in Jewish thought from the Enlightenment through 1933. Such scholars might investigate, for example, the contributions of Jewish thinkers to philosophical questions regarding the systematic form of knowledge (e.g., in Neo-Kantianism), or the meaning of individual existence (e.g., in existentialism), or track the engagement of GermanJewish thinkers in questions of identity and difference. The Center’s interests in the year’s theme are broad and interdisciplinary, and we encourage scholars of GermanJewish culture across the humanities to apply. 

Successful applicants will be expected to carry out their research work at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Center at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem from October 2026 through June 2027. During this period the fellows are expected to conduct their research in Israel and to contribute research on the year’s scholarly theme in the context of the seminar, workshops, and through publication in the Center’s journal. Applicants must have fair knowledge of the German language, i.e. the ability to read texts in German and to follow lectures given in the German language. Applicants interested in a postdoctoral fellowship must have been awarded their Ph.D. no earlier than October 01, 2022. Candidates can submit an application for a post-doctoral fellowship as long as they submit their dissertation no later than June 1st, 2026. Applications for a doctoral fellowship from doctoral students at the Hebrew University can only be accepted if the applicant is in good standing with the Authority for Research Students and has not exceeded the limits for funding established by the University. Applicants may be of all nationalities. Israeli citizens applying for a doctoral fellowship must be registered at the Hebrew University as a Ph.D. student. Israeli citizens who are registered as Ph.D. students at a university abroad will be treated as international applicants. Successful applicants will be granted a monthly stipend of 7,500 NIS for postdoctoral fellowships or 6000 NIS for doctoral fellowships. Furthermore, international applicants will be entitled to health insurance coverage. Fellows from abroad will also be allotted a roundtrip flight (up to $800 from N. America or €600 from Europe).

Applicants must submit:

• Application Form

• A letter of application

• Research proposal (3-5 pages)

• Curriculum Vitae

• One example of written work, max. 30 pages

• Two letters of recommendation

• Official M.A. or Doctoral Diploma

All material can be written either in English, German or Hebrew. Applications should be submitted through the HUJI Scholarships System: http://scholarships.huji.ac.il (the call for applications can be seen under: select faculty > Humanities).

Applications must be submitted by March 26, 2026. Decisions will be made within two months and applicants will be informed accordingly.

Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature & Cultural History

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,

Yitzhak Rabin Building, Mount Scopus Jerusalem 91905

Phone: +972-2-588 1909

rosenzweig@mail.huji.ac.il