Abstract: Juden in Deutschland befinden sich heute an einem Wendepunkt: Die Überlebenden des Holocaust sterben und mit ihnen die authentische Erinnerung. Heute sind es die Kinder der russischsprachigen Einwanderer, die zahlreich nach Deutschland gekommen sind und hier mit großem Elan eine neue diasporische Kultur erschaffen. Auch das Umfeld jüdischen Lebens in Deutschland hat sich geändert. Durch die Einwanderung zahlreicher Türken und anderer Muslime sind Juden nicht mehr die einzige Minorität. Namhafte Autoren zeichnen ein differenziertes Bild von der deutschjüdischen Wirklichkeit im 21. Jahrhundert. Religiöse und Säkulare kommen zu Wort, Repräsentanten des deutschen Vorkriegsjudentums, nichtjüdische Deutsche und Beobachter aus Israel, Israel-Kritiker und Loyalisten. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird deutlich, was in der Öffentlichkeit kaum wahrgenommen wird: dass die jüdische Gemeinschaft schon lange nicht mehr monolithisch, keineswegs politisch, kulturell und religiös homogen ist. Mit Beiträgen u.a. von: Maxim Biller, Michael Brenner, Esther Dischereit, Salomon Korn, Hazel Rosenstrauch, Julius Schoeps, Tom Segev, Moshe Zuckermann
Topics: Citizenship, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Jewish Community, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Diaspora, Immigration, LGBT, Post-1989, Russian-Speaking Jews, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: The politics of Israeli governments in recent years and a drift to neo-conservatism among segments of Diaspora Jewry have substantially polarised the Jewish community abroad. Among many other Jews however, we observe a new insistence on the centrality of Diaspora life and we see re-inventions of Diaspora. These re-inventions are coming from the Jewish periphery: new visibility of women in Jewish affairs with new creative energy regarding religious services and community work at large; a rise of egalitarian religious services, Gay-Lesbian Jewish life, acceptance of intermarried couples, non-halachic (patrilineal) Jews and converts to Judaism who are seeking full acceptance via Reform Judaism or other, local, frameworks. These developments are especially pronounced in Germany, and this book addresses some of its characteristics: the transnational character of German Jewry, its relationship to the state and to other minorities, particularly Moslems, the astonishing revival of Jewish studies and Jewish culture especially also among non-Jews, and most of all, the massive influx of Russian speaking Jews after 1989 who are often at the forefront of redefining Jewish life in Germany. In these respects, Germany has become a laboratory of the ways in which Jewish life in Europe might develop in the future.
Contents:
Introduction: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora; Y.M.Bodemann
PART I: A EUROPEAN JEWISH SPACE?
Can One Reconcile the Jewish World and Europe?; D.Pinto
Residues of Empire: The Paradigmatic Meaning of Jewish Trans-Territorial Experience for an Integrated European History; D.Diner
PART II: THE NEW DIASPORIC FIELD
Can the Experience of Diaspora Judaism Serve as a Model for Islam in Today's Multicultural Europe?; S.Gilman
Learning Diaspora: German Turks and the Jewish Narrative; Y.M.Bodemann & G.Yurdakul
PART III: GERMAN-JEWISH LIMINALITIES
Jewish Studies or Gentile Studies? A Discipline in Search of its Subject; L.Weissberg
How Jewish is it? W.G. Sebald and the Question of "Jewish" Writing in Germany Today: L.Morris
PART IV: RUSSIAN SPEAKING JEWS AND TRANSNATIONALISM
Homo Sovieticus in Disneyland: The Jewish Communities in Germany Today; J.Kessler
Fifteen Years of Russian-Jewish Immigration to Germany: Successes and Setbacks; J.H.Schoeps & O.Glöckner
In the Ethnic Twilight: The Paths of Russian Jews in Germany; Y.M.Bodemann & O.Bagno
Afterword; J.M.Peck
Abstract: How was it possible that a new and sizeable Jewish community developed after the Holocaust in Germany of all places? Jews, Germans, Memory undertakes to assess the past, present, and future of German-Jewish relations in the light of recent political changes and the opening up of historical resources. This welcome new volume investigates how the groundwork was laid for the new Jewish community in the post-war period, with different objectives by Jewish leaders and German politicians. Its contributors touch upon history, literature, the media, ethnicity, politics, and social movements, and attempt to answer the question of how Jews are sociallyconstructed and how the glorious German Jewish past and the Holocaust have been remembered in the course of recent decades. In recent years, German Jewry has seen fundamental transformations with the influx from Eastern Europe and a new leadership in the community. A new self-definition, even self-assurance and reappraisal in Israel and elsewhere, has evolved. Historians, scholars of cultural studies, and those interested in debates on memory and ethnicity will all find something of interest in this diverse volume. Jews, Germans, Memory joins in debate Michael Brenner, Micha Brumlik, Dan Diner, Cilly Kugelmann, and Martin Low-Beer, among the most prominent younger Jewish intellectuals in Germany today, with others who have long observed Germany from both inside and outside: Y. Michal Bodemann, John Borneman, Andrei Markovits, Robin Ostrow, Moishe Postone, Frank Stern, and Jack Zipes
