Abstract: There is a rich body of research concerning Jews who lived in Germany before 1933. Publications on the Holocaust are equally numerous, a significant proportion of this output tackling historical (and contemporary) antisemitism in Germany from a non-Jewish perspective. Much less is known about the post-1945 Jewish population of the former East and West (now reunited) Germany: in terms of Jewish socio-demography, life-worlds, cultural heritage, praxes and about Jewish perspectives on antisemitism. The aim of this article is threefold. Content-wise, it sets out to summarise the existing social scientific research on the post-1945ers, and to identify gaps therein in terms of empirical research, both quantitative and qualitative. Structurally, it seeks to determine the scope and frame of research concerning the post-1945 Jewish population of Germany, demonstrating thus that the study of contemporary Jews is replete with lacunae. Practically, the article outlines the consequences of patchy knowledge, and the hampered knowledge transfer within academia and to the public – consequences which have become painfully clear in the wake of October 7, 2023.
Abstract: The anthropologist Robert H. Lowie (Towards understanding Germany. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1954) offers a historically informed ethnography of Jewish/non-Jewish relations in German speaking lands. Jewish families in Germany, Jews in families, and Jews and their families in post-1945 need to be seen in the context of these historically informed structures that shaped family histories: Interfamilial transmissions of identities and praxes that impacted on family, marriage, and partnership patterns. Issues of family structures including endogamy and exogamy cannot solely be explained by drawing on the religious (halachic) prohibition of exogamy, they need to be understood as a means of boundary management of a specific ethnic group (Rapaport, Jews and Germans after the holocaust. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), to forestall assimilation (Kauders, Unmögliche Heimat. dtv, Munich, 2007), and within a specifically fraught context (Czollek, Desintegriert Euch! Hanser, Munich, 2018; Ginsburg, I’m a German Jew, and I’d Love to Be Normal, In HaAretz, May 19, 2020. https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-i-m-a-german-jew-and-i-d-love-to-be-normal-1.8856650. Accessed May 19 2022, 2020; Kranz, Shades of Jewishness: the creation and maintenance of a Jewish community in post-Shoah Germany, University of St Andrews: St Andrews. Open Access: https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/872. Last accessed 19 May 2022, 2018) that drives the creation of transnational family networks (Bodemann, A Jewish family in Germany today: an intimate portrait. Duke University Press, Durham, 2005)—and neither can proximity, intimacy and love across the ethnic – and religious – divide be phased out because a very significant number of Jews marry and partner up with non-Jews (Kauders, 2007; Kessler, Jüdische Migration aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion seit 1990. Beispiel Berlin. Magisterabschlußarbeit Sozialwissenschaften. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Fern-Universität Hagen, Hagen, 1996; Umfrage 2002: Mitgliederbefragung der Jüdischen Gemeinde zu Berlin. Unpublished research report, 2002; Körber, Zäsur, Wandel oder Neubeginn: Russischsprachige Juden in Deutschland zwischen Recht, Repräsentation und Neubeginn. In: Körber K (ed) Russisch-jüdische Gegenwart in Deutschland, Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp 13–36, 2015; Osteuropa 69:83–92, 2019; Kranz, Notes on embodiment and narratives beyond words. In: Hoffmann B, Reuter U (ed) Translated memories, Rowman, Farnham, pp 347–369, 2020a; Landesbetrieb Information und Technik Nordrhein-Westfalen 2019; Rapaport 1997), and cross an ethno-sexual boundary (Bodemann, 2005; Nagel, Race, ethnicity, and sexuality: intimate intersections, forbidden frontiers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003; Schaum, Being Jewish (and) in love. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin, 2020; Schaum, Love will bring us together (again)? Nachwirkungen der Shoah in Liebesbeziehungen. In Chernivsky M, Lorenz F (eds) Weitergaben und Wirkungen der Shoah in Erziehungs- und Bildungsverhältnissen der Gegenwartsgesellschaft, Verlag BarbaraBudrich, Leverkusen, pp 159–174, 2022). This chapter offers a comprehensive overview of Jewish families, Jews and their families and Jews in families in Germany after 1945 by drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, and by way of contextualizing individual and collective Jewish praxes.
Abstract: The number of Israelis in Germany is rather small, with about 20,000 total (Rebhun/Kranz/Sünker 2022: 65), and an additional 5,000 to 10,000 individuals who have a statistically inferred relationship to Israel. Most of this current volume owes to movements to Germany between the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s (ibid.); migration has plateaued since. Drawing on socio-demographic research conducted within the framework of “The Migration of Israeli Jews to Germany since 1990” (GIF 1186), and amending it by on-going, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork carried out amongst Israelis and Jews in Germany since 2002, this paper seeks to address the institutional infrastructures of migration and of social class. While ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) Israelis migrate to and live in Berlin (Cohen/Gold 2022), they tend to be over-reported in the media, thanks to specific German and Israeli identity investments (Kranz 2022). These Israelis, or more precisely, Israeli Jews, are a smoke screen; they are interpreted as the replacements for the displaced and murdered Jews with the ‘add on’ of Israeliness. They make for a fine case study of understanding German/Jewish/Israeli relations, and unpicking the symbolic Israeli and Jewish capital in combination with the concept of ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) in situ in Berlin and across Germany.
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.
