Questions to Ponder for Session I

Why do you think Elon begins his book with a description of Moses Mendelssohn as a 14 year old immigrant (walking barefoot through the snow)? And why does he dwell so on Mendelssohn's appearance?

What is to gain and what is at risk in creating and maintaining the idea of the duality of identities and the dis/connect between the terms (and ideas) of "German" and "Jew"?

And what do you think is gained and/or lost by locating the narrative history of German Judaism in a specific geographical location? Elon centers his story of the modern Jewish presence in Germany in Berlin but Gay begins the narrative in locations in the west. How does geography affect your understanding of the trajectory of the story we are learning?

Books Returned to Berlin Gemeinde

Restitution project at the Staatsbibliothek recovers pre-WWII books (including travel guides and books from the Boys School in Berlin); they were returned in a big ceremony today at the Centrum Judaicum. News stories are here and here. And if you want to cut your teeth on some German, here's the article about the event in the Judische Allgemeine (the Jewish newspaper in Germany).

Travel Tips & Tools from Google

Just in time to help chart your trip, check out these very helpful tools from the folks at Google.

Applications for Summer 2011 Now Available!

The dates for the Summer 2011 HUC Germany Close Up class/trip have been set: make sure to save May 24-June 3, 2011 on your calendars. Dates for the pre-trip preparation to be arranged in the spring. All currently enrolled HUC-JIR students are eligible (that includes the soon-to-be-ordained and -graduated). Applications are available here.

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.

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.)

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.

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.