The many tensions operative in the chequered history of the European Jews between the Enlightenment and the advent of National Socialism result centrally from the conflict between the forces for emancipation in acculturation on the one hand and traditional anti-Jewish attitudes and racist anti-Semitism on the other. The motivation underlying the contributions to »Theatralia Judaica« is the inquiry into the concrete circumstances under which the ambitions and adversities of this community make themselves apparent in the history of the theatre and its productions and the consequences that the treatment given to them effects.