Abstract: This article seeks to trace how visions of a “Jewish return to Europe” inform contemporary cultural production. I am particularly interested in asking how the presence of Israeli émigrés in Germany, a dramatic instance of such a “return,” challenges the country’s memorial culture due to the “exportation” of dispositions relating to the Holocaust construed in Israel. I view this dislocation of memo-rial practices, a new instance of Hebrew-German exchange, as embedded in a broader discourse on migration, integration and xenophobic violence. At the core of my argument is the 2007–2011 film trilogy
And Europe Will Be Stunned,
directed by Israeli artist Yael Bartana, who is based in Berlin and Amsterdam. The trilogy presents a fictional national movement that advocates the return of 3,300,000 Jews to Poland, with the claim that Poland’s ethnic and religious homogeneity is a deficiency that could be corrected with the renewal of Jewish life in the country. Wearing the form of an enthusiastic political manifesto, the trilogy mirrors early Zionist images and motifs in articulating the vision of the return to the homeland. The trilogy’s end reveals this endeavor as a failure, to which the assassination of the movement’s leader, Slawek, attests.
Abstract: An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century– from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the ‘new Jews of Germany,’ 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.
Table of Contents:
Preface: A Word from the Editors of this Volume - 1
Legacy, Trauma, New Beginning after ‘45: German Jewry Revisited
Michael Wolffsohn: Jews in Divided Germany (1945–1990) and Beyond Scrutinized in Retrospect 13
Michael Elm: The Making of Holocaust Trauma in German Memory: Some Reflection about Robert Thalheim’s Film And Along Come Tourists 31
Julius H. Schoeps: Saving the German-Jewish Legacy?On Jewish and Non-Jewish Attempts of Reconstructing a Lost World 46
Migration as the Driving Factor of Jewish Revival in Re-Unified Germany
Eliezer Ben-Rafael: Germany’s Russian-speaking Jews: Between Original, Present and Affective Homelands 63
Julia Bernstein: Russian Food Stores and their Meaning for Jewish Migrants in Germany and Israel: Honor and ‘Nostalgia’ 81
Elke-Vera Kotowski: Moving from the Present via the Past to Look toward the Future: Jewish Life in Germany Today 103
Fania Oz-Salzberger: Israelis and Germany: A Personal Perspective 117
Culture and Arts – Reflecting a New Jewish Presence
Hanni Mittelmann: Reconceptualization of Jewish Identity as Reflected in Contemporary German Jewish Humorist Literature 131
Karsten Troyke: Hava Nagila: A Personal Reflection on the Reception of Jewish Music in Germany 142
Zachary Johnston: Aliyah Le Berlin: A Documentary about the Next Chapter of Jewish Life in Berlin 152
Ghosts of the Past, Challenges of the Present: Germany Facing Old-New Anti-Semitism
Monika Schwarz-Friesel: Educated Anti-Semitism in the Middle of German Society: Empirical Findings 165
Günther Jikeli: Anti-Semitism within the Extreme Right and Islamists’ Circles 188
H. Julia Eksner: Thrice Tied Tales: Germany, Israel, and German Muslim Youth 208
Towards New Shores: Jewish Education and the Religious Revival
Olaf Glöckner: New Structures of Jewish Education in Germany 231
Walter Homolka: A Vision Come True: Abraham Geiger and the Training of Rabbis and Cantors for Europe 244
Authors and Editors 251
Index 254
Names Index 257
