Abstract: Love, to a significant other, can be the motivation for migration, inform a migration trajectory, or provide reasons for remaining in situ. Even so, love remains in the undercurrents of migration research. It is not explicitly addressed, even though it underpins migration within the constellation of arranged marriage, or if the pursuit of love is limited by social structures, or law. This paper links the dynamics of agentic love and self-initiated migration by way of German (non-Jewish) and Israeli (Jewish) migrants in Israel and Germany, respectively. It highlights individual trajectories of love migrants, establishing that love within the area of migration studies needs to be conceptualised as multifaceted and complex, at times contradictory, and as part of an affective trajectory of the migration process; and that the ability to follow up on falling in love, and to actualise love, cannot be unhinged from privilege.
Abstract: While some of the founders of American cultural anthropology and British social anthropology were part of the transregional Jewish and non-Jewish German speaking community, Jewish anthropology, and anthropology by or on Jews in German-speaking countries, was seriously impacted by the Shoah. Some sources in the area of historical anthropology engage with Jews, who were anthropologists, and who were murdered or who fled, others focus on the appropriation of Jewish cultural heritage and zoom in on discourses about Jews. Living Jews are oftentimes covered in dissertations, after which the nascent ethnologist/anthropologist vanishes from academia, or leaves the country: research on living Jews seems an unsustainable career move. This paper is a first attempt to sketch out the developments of Jewish anthropology – in the broadest sense – in Germany post-1945. It will pay due attention to structures, societal, social, and academic; the place of anthropology within these structures; and Jews, as an ethno-religious group being researched by anthropologists (and other ethnographers); and the anthropologists/ethnographers who research them. By paying close attention to the anthropologists and ethnographers themselves, it is possible to “map the margins” (Crenshaw 1991) of anthropological and ethnographic work in an emotionalized, ideologized, and politicized field, a field that is indicative of post-genocidal intergroup relations in situ.
Abstract: Critically analyzing Israeli-Jewish migration to Germany, A Double Burden combines complementary approaches from the social sciences—quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic research—to track migrants' reasons for moving, their families' reactions, their settlement in the new country, and their social and economic integration, construction of identity, and perceptions of old and new antisemitism in Germany. Each chapter is placed within a relevant theoretical framework, the entire discussion set against the background of present-day international migration in general, migration to Germany in particular, and the Jewish experience in unified Germany. Rich with empirical evidence and presented with exceptional clarity and accessibility, A Double Burden will appeal to scholars of migration studies, the Israeli Diaspora, and German-Jewish life, as it also illuminates trauma and memory among third-generation Holocaust survivors.
Abstract: Around 2011 Israeli (Jewish) immigration to Germany became a recurring subject in public discourse. Reflecting ideological investments, the migration was reported with curiosity. Israeli migrants turned into Jews in German imagination, contradicting their self-definition of being primarily Israelis. As Jews they were welcome, but within limits. If the ‘guests’ expressed too much agency and challenged the status quo of German/Jewish and more so Jewish/Muslim and Israeli/Palestinian relations, things could become complicated. While Palestinian issues are met with increasing support across the social, media, and political spheres, Palestinians are not that welcome as (Muslim) migrants. They are suspected of importing a ‘new antisemitism.’ This paper seeks to unravel the conflicting attitudes towards the interlinked categories Israelis/Jews and Muslims/Palestinians, by focussing on the issue of the politics of hospitality. These reveal how agentic presences of those categorised as others destabilise the assumed ethnic, and ethno-religious boundaries of the German, nominally Christian, majority.
Abstract: Most academic research on Jews in Germany addresses the past, culture, and religion. If the present is discussed, researchers mainly focus on antisemitism. Ina SCHAUM breaks this pattern. Her research needs to be located in a transdisciplinary framework. In her work, she introduces individual lives, and expressions of agency, indicating the divide between the diversity of Jews, and their experiences, and how they are perceived by non-Jews. Boldly, she uses case studies to depict what "doing being Jewish" means for young Jews in connection to their intimate love relationships. The outcome is refreshing; it does full justice to Jewish life-worlds in Germany. By way of presenting two young Jews in Germany in depth, SCHAUM lifts the lid on the underlying diversity of Germany's Jewish population. She contrasts constructions of Jews with real living Jews, revealing that Jewishness is but one aspect in their quest for love, and that the researcher of the bespoke Jew is indeed also an implicated subject. SCHAUM's work needs to be appreciated as a harbinger in the country where she is based. Informed by English-language anthropology and sociology, she pushes methodological boundaries, consistently questioning the line between researcher and researched from late 1960s onwards. Jews are her case study; yet her theoretical considerations and methodological reflections extend much further.
Abstract: This PhD thesis focuses on the creation and maintenance of the liberal Jewish community in present day Cologne, Germany. The community has the telling name Gescher LaMassoret, which translates into „Bridge to Tradition.‟ The name gives away that this specific community, its individual members and its struggles cannot be understood without the socio-historic context of Germany and the Holocaust. Although this Jewish community is not a community of Holocaust survivors, the dichotomy Jewish-German takes various shapes within the community and surfaces in the narratives of the individual members. These narratives reflect the uniqueness of each individual in the community. While this is a truism, this individual uniqueness is a key element in Gescher LaMassoret, whose membership consists of people from various countries who have various native languages. Furthermore, the community comprises members of Jewish descent as well as Jews of conversion who are of German, non- Jewish parentage. Due to the aftermaths of the Holocaust and the fact that Gescher LaMassoret houses a vast internal diversity, the creation of this community which lacks any tradition happens through mixing and meshing the life-stories and other narratives of the members, which flow into the collective narrative of the community. On the surface, the narratives of the individual members seem in conflict, they even contradict each other, which means that the narrative of the community is in constant tension. However, under the dissimilarities on the surface of the individual narratives hide similarities in terms of shared values and attitudes, which allow for enough overlaps to create a community by way of braiding a collective narrative, which offers the members to experience a 'felt ethnicity.'
Abstract: It goes against the intuition of some, triggers strong responses from others, and still raises the eyebrows of many: not only did Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) and German Jews withstand attempts to entice them to make aliyah from Germany post-Shoah and become “local Jews,” but also Russian Jews immigrated in higher numbers to Germany than to Israel for a while, and now Israeli Jews are immigrating to Germany, too. Yet do Jews in Germany see themselves in exile from Israel, or has Germany become their home of choice? This paper explores the life-worlds of a select number of individuals who fall into the age cohort of the Third Generation, and who form part of the three numerically largest groups: German Jews and Displaced Persons (DPs) and their descendants (“local Jews”); Russian Jews and their children who came to Germany in the 1990s; and Israelis who started arriving in significant numbers in the 2000s. By depicting their life-worlds, the paper sheds light onto how Jews in the country structure, live, do, experience, and contend their Jewishness collectiveness, and express Jewishnessess individually, and how, effectively, they create diasporic life-worlds, and have a special relationship to Israel but hardly feel in exile from Israel.
Abstract: Einwanderung, Erinnerungspolitik, Israel und die deutsche Geschichte sind Themen, über die in Deutschland regelmäßig diskutiert wird. Berlin, die Hauptstadt des neuen Deutschlands, ist hippe Metropole und Anziehungspunkt für Menschen aus allen Ländern. Was passiert, wenn das alles zusammenkommt, wenn eine Gruppe von Personen diese Themen alle auf einmal repräsentiert? Die Rede ist von den israelischen Einwanderern in Berlin. Im Herbst 2013 diagnostizierten israelische Medien eine neue Auswanderungswelle, die ihren Ausgangspunkt in den sozialen Protesten 2011 und den dabei kritisierten hohen Lebenshaltungskosten in Israel hatte. Daraufhin wurde in beiden Ländern ausführlich über das Phänomen berichtet, dass es viele junge Israelis ausgerechnet nach Berlin, also Deutschland, ziehe. In Israel wurde dies mit einer Mischung aus Besorgnis und Neugier betrachtet, während in Deutschland klar die Neugier überwog. Künstler verarbeiteten die Entwicklung in ihren Werken, wie die israelische Band Shmemel mit ihrem Song „Berlin“.
Trotz oder vielleicht gerade wegen der emotionalen Aufladung des Themas hat die Migration von Israelis nach Berlin fast schon Züge eines Mythos. Empirisch-wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse liegen bisher jedenfalls kaum vor, und die existierenden Studien sind nur schwer zugänglich. Diesem Mangel will dieser Bericht abhelfen und klären, wie viele Israelis es in Berlin überhaupt gibt und wer sie sind. Weiter sollen die Motive für den Umzug dorthin und der Umgang mit der eigenen Identität untersucht werden.
