Friday, May 14, 2010

Cities and Those Other Places We'll Be Visiting

Should you be too busy to scroll down the page and click on any of the links to the right, here's the message for you:
Our hotel in Berlin.
The Jewish community in Berlin. And the official Berlin Gemeinde.
The egal minyan where we'll be on Friday night. And other synagogues in Berlin.
Scheunenviertel.
Sachsenhausen.
The Jewish Museum Berlin.
Reichstag and Bundestag (German Parliament).
Speyer.
Heidelberg (including the Hochschule fuer Juedische Studien).
Worms.
Weimar.
Abraham Geiger College.
A guide to Berlin!

You may also want to read up on these places through the various Wikipedia pages...it's always nice to know what you're seeing.

Thursday, May 13, 2010


View HUC Germany Close Up in a larger map

Memory Construction

How conceptual is too conceptual? What does a monument and/or a memorial need in order both to have value and to produce the memory being represented? What problems do monuments encounter when put into dialogue with (or made to dissent from) politics, perception and bureaucracy?

On the trope of "the German Jew"

Left over from today's discussion--what is y/our investment in the role and meaning of German Jews (both historical and contemporary) in the narrative of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust? What is it that you/we "want" from them and how much is that desire a projection (or construction) of Americanism? Even more specifically, what do you think it is that diaspora Judaism expects from German Judaism?

bigger and better

Just in time for today's discussion, it turns out that the Jewish Museum in Berlin is expanding!

and, just down the street...

Art goes public in Berlin! (It's a very cool exhibition space.)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

on how to get to the hotel...

Make sure to print these directions out, on the very off chance that you won't remember it after your flight...

When you land at Tegel, you want to take Bus #128; you can find the stop next to Gate #15 in Terminal A. You can buy a ticket from the bus driver ("Einzelfahrt"/One way--A/B ticket) or from the machine at the bus stop (if you buy it from the machine, you will need to validate the ticket--the validating machine is on-the-bus itself; look for a red box with a slot in it). Take the bus to the U-Bahn (subway) station called "Kurt Schuhmacher Platz." You'll get off the bus and go downstairs to get on the U-6 toward "Alt-Mariendorf." (The directions are -very- clearly marked, plus the trains themselves are labeled with the direction in which they travel.)

You have two options--one requires a 5-10 minutes walking, the other requires a change at a busy train station.

Option ONE: You'll go NINE stations to "Oranienburger Tor." Get off the train and go out of the station. You'll walk north on Friedrichstrasse to Oranienburgerstrasse (look at the map). Turn right on Oranienburgerstrasse, walking on the north side of the street. Take the second left on to Auguststrasse--the hotel--Augustinenhof--is at number 82 Auguststrasse.

Option TWO: You'll go TEN stations to "Friedrichstrasse." Get off the train and look for "S-Bahn" signs (Green, with the letter "S"). You'll transfer to S1 (toward "Oranienburg") or S2 (toward Bernau) and go ONE station to "Oranienburgerstrasse." Get out of the station--orient yourself toward the New Synagogue (clearly identified by the large gold top). Walk north on Tucholskystrasse (the New Synagogue will be to your right, down the street). Take the first left on to Auguststrasse. The hotel--Augustinenhof--is at Auguststraße 82.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Actually, he's MOST famous for the Jewish Museum in Berlin

A (very brief) interview with Daniel Libeskind, who designed the reconstruction of the World Trade Center (among other, really cool, really interesting projects).

One more (at least for today)





Ponder this: how would you have reconstructed Germany after the war?

And, in the week forward...

In LA's American Judaism class, we spoke quite a bit about the idea of the sanctity of the Holocaust, who "owns" it as an experience to be referenced and made representative, and the way in which the Holocaust has become a near-universal referent for other persecutions, oppressions and experiences of murder on a massive scale. The use of the Holocaust as an important metaphor to indicate the depth, breadth and extent of genocide and killing campaigns has become familiar. If we press the question of universal and particular experience (and the way that Judaism can be both) onto the Jewish experience in WWII, we beg a whole set of questions. Chief among them (or, high on the list) is how we use German Jews as representative of the Holocaust when their experience in it was so unique. How does re-telling the history of the Holocaust through the experience of Jews living in Nazi Germany change your perceptions and understanding of the event as a whole?

On Weimar


The Weimar Republic years seem to serve a very similar purpose in the creation of a German-Jewish mythos as did Moses Mendelssohn. What do you think it is that make people pine for this period of German Jewish history? What do *you* find the most interesting?

For the record, I've got a thing for Bauhaus.

Picking sides

On which side of the fence do you currently fall: Team Inevitability or Team Capriciousness? For the sake of discussion, do this little exercise. Pick an event or moment that you think best represents your position, then argue against it, that is, take the other side of the debate and make--genuinely, not passively--a brief case for why your example provides evidence of your "new" position.

and on a related note...

As you read through the material, one aspect of Jewish communal life becomes clear: there are a LOT of Jewish communal organizations. Do you think the proliferation of different interests groups is a sign of German-Jewish integration, security and acceptance or is it a sign of anxiety about fitting in?

Questioning the Jewish Question


What do you think: is the Jewish Question laid to rest after the unification of Germany under Bismarck (and the total emancipation of all German Jews)? In other words, how much is the "Jewish Question" of the 1930s a totally *other* question and how much is it a continuation of the German-Jewish experience of the "long" 19th century?

on the re-forming of Judaism

As you catch up on the readings, several posts will offer some questions for discussion and reflection. The first: what do you think about the early expressions of liberal Judaism? How do the innovations of the Enlightenment and Romantic German cultural and intellectual influences resonate with your understanding of early American Reform and with contemporary Reform Judaism?

(As a side note, here's the Liberal Jewish Community in Hamburg now.)

Art for art's sake

While we're there:
Frida Kahlo Retrospective at the Martin Gropius Bau along with an exhibit of the incredible work of Olaf Eliasson, the new Topography of Terror exhibit is open (scary name very cool outdoor exhibit), there's a complex exhibit on the May Day riots (May 1st has a long, complex history as a worker's holiday) and there's a very good chance that the Eichmann files will be made available to the public while we're there.

Financial in/stability

How much do you know about what's going on in Greece and its financial instability? Since the EU adopted the Euro as its common currency, there have been all kinds of really interesting turns and twists and none--perhaps--more so than the way in which Greece's massive debt has affected the more fiscally responsible countries who are now responsible for finding a fix. It's bound to be a MAJOR topic while we're in Germany both because of how important a role the German market plays in Europe but also because it seems to play into the historical relationship between Germany and Greece (especially in the 20th century). Carve out a little time to familiarize yourselves with it...

only without the bonfire

See this article about the first Lag B'Omer parade in Berlin!