Keele ja meele rollist võõrast omaks saamise teel professor Lazar Gulkowitschi näitel

Abstract

On the role of language and consciousness in the
process of becoming “one of our own” upon the
example of Professor Lazar Gulkowitsch

Based on archive materials, the article explores the importance of language
and consciousness in the process of becoming an Estonian citizen
upon the example of Professor Lazar Gulkowitsch (1898–1941).
The scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums, Lazar Gulkowitsch was
born and raised in a traditional Jewish family in Zirin (Belarus), he
acquired his doctoral degree in philosophy at the Albertus University
in Königsberg, worked at Leipzig University (Germany) first as
a lecturer on Late Hebrew, Jewish-Aramaic, and Talmudic Studies
at the faculty of theology and then as an associate professor of the
Study of Late Judaism at the faculty of philosophy. In 1934–1940
he was the head of the chair for Jewish Studies at the University
of Tartu (Estonia). He was killed by the Nazis during the occupation
of Estonia in the summer of 1941. His scholarly objective was
to capture the phenomenon of Judaism as a historical and current
entity especially from the aspect of language by exploring Hebrew
as a reflection of and basis for the history of Jewish ideas; outlining
both its formal-grammatical and material-conceptual aspects. For
this purpose he applied a method based on the history of ideas (begriffsgeschichtliche
Methode), defining the central ideas of the Jewish
culture (God, good, Hesed, etc.). Language—a central part in his scholarly
work—also played an important role to him in the process of
becoming an Estonian citizen.