I don't know the book, so I'm not sure whether the "Judentum" here refers to the religion (Judaism) or the people (Jewry), so it's difficult to answer. Read the book & check what the author actually means.

Der deutsch-jüdische Kontext wird von Bernd Bocian als grundlegend für das Verständnis von Person und Werk beschrieben.
http://www.amazon.de/Fritz-Perls-Berlin-1893-...

Or maybe jewishness?

This review of the book refers (near the end) to German Jewry http://division39.org/pub_reviews_detail.php?...

Here, might "Jewishness" do the job? Or "the Jewish world"?

Thanks for the suggestions. I also thought of Jewishness (which, interestingly, LEO does not mention).

Jewishness is not current. I would use it to translate a German nonce form, such as das Jüdische, but not for Judentum. Surely in parallel with another belief system, psychoanalysis, Judentum here means Judaism.

How about Jewish life? I think it is what might be intended here in the German book title.

mabr, in parallel with another belief system, Judentum may not mean Judaism, just as Christentum may not mean Christianity. With the latter we accept "Christendom" but don't have an acceptable corresponding word for Judentum. Since Christendom is equivalent to "the Christian world", I would suggest "the Jewish world" as a translation.

You set us an interesting problem here, eric. "Judaism" is clearly not right here, and "Jewry" seems too broad. For me, the best term in the context would seem to be "Being Jewish", but this clearly doesn't fit with the rest of the title.

I think if I were just referring to the title of the book, I would stick with "Jewry", despite its drawbacks. But if I were translating the whole book, I would try to give it a different title, perhaps something along the lines of "Fritz Perls in Berlin 1893 - 1933: A German Jew confronting Expressionism and Psychoanalysis"

I would go for 'Judaism' or 'Jewishness,' simply because the word 'Jewry' is thoroughly archaic. To me its associations are much more medieval than modern.

If you need a term for the people as opposed to the religion, why not just 'the Jewish people'? But to me (though I'm not Jewish), the word 'Judaism' can indeed encompass both the religion and its adherents.

It's rather a sweeping statement to say "jewishness is not current". The word does seem to be in current use, e.g. Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness, a book by an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University, Indiana, published in 2007 - see http://www3.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue...

I suspect the only way you'll find the right word for Judentum is to follow Richard's earlier advice and read the book.

@hm--us, I also thought that "Jewry" seemed somewhat archaic, but a quick check seemed to show that the word is still actively used in Jewish publications; e.g. "The Madoff Scandal and the Future of American Jewry"; Commentary, May 2009.

I don't agree that "Judaism" encompasses the Jewish people as well as the religion; -- I don't think it is a good translation in this case. But (along with Villager) I would accept "Jewishness" if a one-word translation is required.

I retract not current. What I really meant is that Jewishness an abstract coinage of the same register as das Jüdische. It's not a dictionary word like Judentum. (OED records Jewishness as archaic in the sense of Judaism, and gives two 19th-century citations for Jewishness in the sense of Jewish quality or character, one of them slightly ironic, the other contrived ("The Jews of this country are rapidly losing all their Jewishness"). Jewry is indeed quite normal among Jews (bin selber einer).

The book title lists in parallel three movements or orientations of thought that Perls evidently allied himself with, or experienced, or explored. Surely the reference is Jewish culture or religion, not the Jewish people. For that, Judaism is the right word.

You can look at the Cambridge book ad. I don't think you want to write like that.

From link the above: His fate exemplifies the complex and tormented relationship between Germans and Jews and the special role of German Jewry in the German cultural and intellectual history. It shows that Hitler’s most heinous crime was not only genocide but also culturocide, the destruction of the European tradition of the march of ideas, intellectual freedom, and the rule of democracy