Talk:Jewish Cemetery, Währing

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[edit] Israelitisch

This, obviously, is a cognate of Israelite, but the translation into English depends on context, and in the different cases in this article, is Jewish for all of them.

If you're talking about certain Old Testament contexts, or people who lived in Israel after 1948, then it might be Israelite. But when you're talking about cultural organizations, cemeteries, women's organizations, et cetera, then it's just plain "Jewish".

If the word modifies Kultusgemeinde, then it's probably the archaic and somewhat euphemistic usage (to avoid saying Jüdische) commonly used at the time, and still surviving, almost entirely in that context. (Try a search engine for israelitische and you'll get almost nothing but JCCs in different cities all over German-speaking Europe.)

Regarding Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien there simply was no state of Israel in 1784, this would've been known as the Jewish Cultural Center of Vienna (or, Vienna JCC) if there were any non-antisemitic English speakers there to talk about it. As it happens, this cultural center still exists (or exists again) under that very name, and has a bilingual website. In their list of Jewish Organizations around Vienna the word Jewish is all over it, and the word Israelitisch never appears. (Not that they're the standard-bearer for de-en translation, but they did happen to get it right.)

A contrarian argument: for the single case of an 18th century Jewish Cultural organization, if you wanted to capture how certain English-speaking people of the time would have referred to it, there were certain elements in England who also euphemistically, or anti-semitically (hard to tease out which) might've used the term "Israelite". But it's not how we say it now. (Try a search engine search for "jewish cultural organization" vs "israelite cultural organization" and note the difference in the number of results.)

Israelitische Abteilung ... Wiener Zentralfriedhof -- by the same token, this is simply the Jewish part of the cemetery. No "Israelites" are buried there, it's safe to say.

Frauenverien - ditto. Mathglot (talk) 03:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)