Berel Lang

Biographic Data

ID199396
NAMEBerel Lang
GIVEN NAMESBerel
FAMILY NAMELang
SIGNATURELANG B
AFFILIATIONSEötvös Loránd University
ORCID0000-0003-2154-363X
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS65
TOTAL CITATIONS32
AUTHOR COUNT65
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1964
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • From Codes to Contexts: The Maturation of Historical Cryptology

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory Compass2026

    Over the past decades, the study of historical cryptology in Europe has evolved from a marginal, largely individual pursuit into a consolidated field of research with dedicated conferences, collaborative projects, and institutional research groups. This article offers a critical overview of this maturation, tracing how methodological innovation, digital infrastructure, and interdisciplinary cooperation have reshaped the investigation of encrypted…

  • Obituary

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory and Theory2025

  • An STS analysis of a digital humanities collaboration: Trading zones, boundary objects, and interactional expertise in the Decrypt project

    Open AccessBerel Lang, Beáta MegyesiARTICLEHumanities and Social Sciences…2024

    A widely shared recognition over the past decade is that the methodology and the basic concepts of science and technology studies (STS) can be used to analyze collaborations in the cross-disciplinary field of digital humanities (DH). The concepts of trading zones (Galison, 2010), boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989), and interactional expertise (Collins and Evans, 2007) are particularly fruitful for describing projects in which researchers…

  • Whose Soul Is It?—Destinative Magic in East-Central Europe (14th–18th Centuries)

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEReligions2024

    This study explores destinative elements in late medieval and early modern learned magic in East-Central Europe, focusing on names, images, characters, invocations, and addresses facilitating communication with transcendental entities. It contends that a thematic shift occurred in the early modern era, witnessing a decline in destinative talisman texts, replaced by a surge in treasure-hunting manuals. Drawing from legal cases and treasure-hunting…

  • Sarah L. Higley, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion

    Berel Lang, Benedek LángARTICLECahiers de recherches médiévales…2020

    Few books can so convincingly demonstrate that there is a real continuity between the Middle Ages and our times, and that a diachronic examination of a medieval work can prove to be fruitful. Sarah Higley’s monograph contains a contextualization, edition and translation of the famous Lingua ignota of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). It is a genuinely medievalist study and text edition, however, when explaining the motivation behind the constructi…

  • Das Losbuch: Manuskriptologie einer Textsorte des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts, by Marco Heiles

    Berel Lang, Benedek LángARTICLEAries2020

  • Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century James Loeffler

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHolocaust and Genocide Studies2019

    Historical narrative differs from mere chronology in the links that historians impose on events and dates, mainly as causal connectives. Chronology itself is inherently a selective process, and omissions at this first level will distort any historical accounts built on it. Faults may also surface in historical narrative because of competing narratives not taken into account. James Loeffler’s thesis in Rooted Cosmopolitans—his title’s challenge to…

  • Sergio Luzzatto. Primo Levi’s Resistance: Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEThe American Historical Review2018

    Although it does not quite live up to its ambitious title, Sergio Luzzatto’s Primo Levi’s Resistance: Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy is a valuably informative book. Readers of Primo Levi’s own scant writings about his three months as a partisan in the mountains of Italy’s Piedmont region, and now of Luzzatto’s more detailed account, will recognize Levi’s very modest role in the Italian Resistance to the Nazi occupation of Italy. He wa…

  • Group Rights and (Again) in Defence of “Genocide

    Berel LangARTICLEJournal of Genocide Research2018

    I appreciate the consideration and attention the commentators have given Genocide: The Act as Idea. If I’d had the benefit of their comments earlier in the book’s history, I would have addressed a

  • Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life

    Berel Lang, Ariella LangBOOKPrimo Levi2017

  • IV.1. La philosophie et la Shoah: Le chaînon manquant

    Berel Lang, Gilles-Olivier SilvagniARTICLERevue d’Histoire de la Shoah2017

    The claim argued here is that philosophy as a profession has largely ignored the Shoah as a significant historical event with implications for such central philosophical issues as theories of human nature, the status of ethical judgment and the epistemic grounds of knowledge. There have been exceptions to this “missing link” but this has been a distinctively minority voice compared to other philosophical writings on the same issues. A speculative…

  • White, Friedländer, “… And the Rest Is History”: A Pax Historiana

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory and Theory2017

    Close analysis of the ostensive disagreement between Saul Friedländer and Hayden White on the necessarily literary character of Holocaust historiography shows instead of conflict two compatible and even mutually supportive emphases in that project: the assumption in modernist and disruptive narratives as elsewhere of a “corpus of facts,” together with the role of figurative discourse in conveying relevant features of events that linear chronologi…

  • The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces BetweenJames E. Young

    Berel LangARTICLEHolocaust and Genocide Studies2017

    In the seventy years since World War II, commemorative efforts have been more widespread, diverse, and complex than for any previous period. James Young has been a significant contributor to this memorial culture. In a new volume of selected writings, he calls attention to key stages in the process of memorialization, drawing here on his own direct involvement in it. His role has consisted in struggling in the trenches: he has been called on to m…

  • Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life

    Ariella Lang, Berel LangBOOKPrimo Levi2014

    In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of only 24 who survived the eleven months before the camp's liberation. Upon returning to his native Turin, Levi resumed work as a chemist and was employed for thirty years by a company specialising in paint…

  • People's Secrets: Towards a Social History of Early Modern Cryptography

    Berel Lang, Benedek LángARTICLESixteenth Century Journal2014

    The author's research aims to present a comprehensive and contextualizing history of cryptography based on the rich source material of early modern Hungary. Cryptography will be contextualized in a wide range of social strata, integrated into the larger intellectual milieu of secrecy. This article surveys the most important source types of research in the field of diplomacy, private correspondence, espionage, student handbooks, and personal diari…

  • "Between Genocide and "Genocide

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory and Theory2011

    The two books discussed here join a current pushback against the concept (thus also against claims for the historical occurrence) of genocide. Nichanian focuses on the Armenian "Aghed" ("Catastrophe"), inferring from his view of that event's undeniability that "genocide is not a fact" (since all facts are deniable). May's critique assumes that groups don't really-"objectively"-exist, as (by contrast) individuals do; thus, genocide-group murder-al…

  • Response to Paul Boghossian, ‘The concept of genocide

    Berel LangARTICLEJournal of Genocide Research2010

    Paul Boghossian is critical of both the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the concept of genocide as such (the ‘such’ as defined by the Convention itself)

  • Six Questions on (Or About) Holocaust Denial

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory and Theory2010Cited by: 1

    Six questions are outlined and then responded to about Holocaust denial. These consider (1) Holocaust denial's view of the Holocaust counterfactually-if it had occurred; (2) the presumed adequacy of the binary choice between Holocaust denial and affirmation; (3) the status and credence of their own assertions among denial advocates; (4) the often implied historiographic uniqueness of Holocaust denial; (5) the contributions to Holocaust history of…

  • The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy

    Open AccessMelissa L Morgan, Steven Nadler et al.BOOKThe Cambridge companion to modern…2007

    Modern Jewish philosophy emerged in the seventeenth century, with the impact of the new science and modern philosophy on thinkers who were reflecting upon the nature of Judaism and Jewish life. This collection of essays examines the work of several of the most important of these figures, from the seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries, and addresses themes central to the tradition of modern Jewish philosophy: language and revelation, autonom…

  • Nietzsche and Zion

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEAJS Review The Journal of the…2006

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  • Angels Around the Crystal: The Prayer Book of King Wladislas and the Treasure Hunts of Henry the Bohemian

    Berel Lang, Benedek LángARTICLEAries2005

    ANGELS AROUND THE CRYSTAL: THE PRAYER BOOK OF KING WLADISLAS AND THE TREASURE HUNTS OF HENRY THE BOHEMIAN 1 B ENEDEK L ÁNG Introduction: Crystallomancy and Ritual Magic Written evidence on the medieval practice of crystal magic is rather scat- tered and fragmentary; still, its basic rules can be reconstructed 2 . In his sur- vey of magic, William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (ca. 1180-1249), presents the use of crystal balls (more precisely the i…

  • Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History

    Berel Lang, Paul R DeslandesBOOKOxbridge Men2005

    Part I. In the Matter of Justice1. The Nazi as Criminal: Inside and Outside the Holocaust 2. Forgiveness, Revenge, and the Limits of Holocaust Justice 3. Evil, Suffering, and the Holocaust 4. Comparative Evil: Measuring Numbers, Degrees, People Part II. Language and Lessons5. The Grammar of Antisemitism 6. The Unspeakable vs. the Testimonial: Holocaust Trauma in Holocaust History 7. Undoing Certain Mischievous Questions about the Holocaust 8. Fro…

  • Hyphenated-Jews and the Anxiety of Identity

    Berel LangARTICLEJewish Social Studies2005Cited by: 9

    Hyphenated-Jews and the Anxiety of Identity Berel Lang (bio) My unlikely starting point here is a trivial item of grammar (to slight it further, of punctuation)—little noticed even on occasions when grammar or punctuation do raise serious conceptual questions. The lowly hyphen is bound by few set rules; it rests on a convenient escape clause that allows users themselves to decide at times to do away with it—turning hyphenated phrases back into tw…

  • Oskar Rosenfeld and the Realism of Holocaust-History: On Sex, Shit, and Status

    Open AccessBerel LangARTICLEHistory and Theory2004References: 1

    In the Beginning was the Ghetto: 890 Days in Lodz. By Oskar Rosenfeld. Edited and with an Introduction by Hanno Loewy; Translated by Brigitte M. Goldstein

  • ‘The Moral Space of Figurative Discourse’

    Berel LangCHAPTERHolocaust2003