Dear readers and dear friends of Medaon,

we are excited to be able to present you with this year’s spring edition. Two articles center on the development of the Jewish youth organization Hashomer Hatzair in the 1930s: Nora Kissling explores in detail the development of the American part of the movement in historical perspective. Nitzan Menagem and Julia Salomo introduce a history project from today’s Berlin chapter (Ken), in which members and others, Jews and non-Jews alike, dealt with the movement’s history in 1930s Berlin and developed educational materials based on this.

In addition to a variety of other individual articles and reviews, Veronika Jičínská introduces the life and work of the author Picková-Saudková as part of our series “Lives of Jewish Women”. Drawing on the concept of “goynormativity”, Dani Kranz and Sarah M. Ross take a look back at the activities throughout the year celebrating “1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany”.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all of the reviewers for their support in making this issue. We would also like to thank Steffen Schröter from text plus form, Cathleen Bürgelt, Patricia Casey Sutcliffe and Margaret-Ann Schellenberg for their copy editing and translations, which were carried out with their usual diligence and care.

Special thanks go to Claudia Prestel, who is leaving Medaon after several years working in the “Jewish Life after 1945” editorial department. We wish her all the best in her future personal and academic endeavors!

At the same time, we would like to welcome our new editorial board members Moritz Bauerfeind and Steffen Heidrich, who will be supporting the editorial departments “Reviews” and “Jewish Life after 1945” respectively from now on—we are very happy to have them join us and look forward to working with them!

The editors of Medaon, May 2023.