The 2017 edition of the Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook encompasses two focal points: The first deals with the year 1938, an incisive year for Europe's Jews, against the background of Jewish experiences and political activities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the basis of issues surrounding citizenship, minority rights, flight, and migration, this dramatic crisis is cast in a new light, with the focus placed especially on the states of Central and Eastern Europe. The second focal point takes the enduring surge in biographical research as an impetus to examine the reasons for the popularity of this genre within Jewish Studies. Using examples from current research projects on Jewish intellectuals, core issues and challenges of biographical writing are presented and discussed. The general part and the special sections of the Yearbook contain contributions on the conjunction of political and religious history, on the study of nationalism and historical semantics, as well as on Sholem Aleichem, Franz Neumann, and Ernst Grumach.