In 1933, there were about 160,000 Jews in Berlin. In 1945, the Jewish population of the whole of Germany was 30,000.
On September 9, the Associated Press carried a story about today’s Berlin as the home of between nine and fifteen thousand Israelis, mostly young.
One of them is Lea Fabrikant, who is twenty-six and a photography student. She arrived two years ago having lived through the suicide bombings in Jerusalem, her home town, during the 1990s. She now loves Berlin’s tranquility, relaxed spirit and affordability for students and artists.
“I love Israel,” she said. “but I just couldn’t live there anymore. It’s like a small village and so militaristic. Most of all, I needed freedom and space, and I found it here.”
Asaf Leshem, a thirty-six-year-old travel guide, said his move three years ago had much to do with his family’s past in Germany. His grandfather, he said, were he alive, would have supported his decision.
“The Nazis ruled Germany for twelve years and many German Jews felt like the Nazis abducted the country from them,” Leshem said. “My grandparents also had good memories, especially from their childhood in Germany, how they used to go on trips to the Baltic Sea or went for a swim in Berlin’s Grunewald forest.”
Leshem grew up in Israel but says he feels a bit German himself and appreciates German culture.
Udi Cohen, who is thirty-two, wandered around the U.S. and Europe for years before settling in Berlin. He opened a bistro in Berlin’s Mitte district where he sells sandwiches and salads with an Israeli twist. “In Israel, I couldn’t function. I couldn’t find a job, but here I’m fine and enjoy the vibe and energy of the city,” he said.
“I think there’s something growing here: a new Jewish community in Berlin.”
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
1. Personally (for reasons that are irrational but understandable) because my parents were German Jews who fled the Nazis, I can’t bring myself to visit Germany. But I think this is a very encouraging turn of events.
2. It’s ironic that Jews have the right to return to Germany but Palestinians do not have the right to return to Israel. Is it provocative to draw that parallel?
No. there is no parallel.
For Israelis the question of a Palestinian mass return is an existential question. It would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Eric’s response wise as usual.
The existential argument is not persuasive. If we Jews can flourish in Berlin, Miami, Brisbane, New York, Toronto and Johannesburg, then why couldn’t we thrive in a state where we co-exist with Palestinians? The state of being Jewish does not depend on a Jewish state. If young Jews from Israel can feel at home in Berlin, then Jews in Israel would eventually become comfortable living peacefully in a one or two-state Middle East. And the Jewish diaspora could breathe a sigh of relief, at last. I know this is not resolvable in one paragraph or even a year of blogging, but “next year in Jerusalem” is more a metaphor and state of mind than a temporal or geographic marker. If not now, when?
You are in good company, taking that position. No doubt in the long run coexistence withine one framework is the only answer. But in the short run……
At this time I feel no longer uncomfortable in Germany. But I feel the US is my home and I have no thought of “returning” to Germany. I guess Eric feels the same, right ?
I only express my personal views in person, on the telephone, or in e-mail messages – never on the blog. But for once this time I will.
I do.
I spent a few enjoyable days in Berlin in 2002, just as the construction fences came down revealing the “New Berlin”. A Berlin full of eyecatching architecture, proud, and bold. Should we feel threatened? No! Because, (to steal a phrase from the excellent documentary “Tickle in the Heart” about the Klezmer Epstein Brother’s Eastern European Tour) young Germans, and many other European youth, have shown interest in rediscovering the culture, traditions, and for some – Religion – that their Grandparents/Great Grandparents tore from their society. Many interviewed spoke of it as THEIR loss of THEIR own past, speaking of the Jewish culture and Klezmer music as having been part of their own, not just speaking of the loss for the victims and their families. (No Holocaust deniers here!) The Jewish quarter was packed with partying young and old alike, in bars/restaurants and on the street. All colours/cultures/sexual preferences of the rainbow. Hebrew signs on the storefronts announced that, unlike Vienna, one could get a bagel or Halvah at Midnight! The streets were as risque as imagined in Cabaret, awash with jazz and Klezmer musicians and patrons. All this seemed to have official sanction and support (from smiling but very present police presence)… in the shadow of the Orange (?) Street Synagogue, officially reopened in a driving rain storm by (a determined and very wet) Chancellor Kohl almost a generation ago. The debate in Europe of the time among a number of Jewish historians/ethnographers while I lived in Vienna and visited Berlin was whether the high demand for Klezmer music pulling in so many non Jewish performers was risking cultural appropriation!
To David Schatzky I recommend a full tour of Berlin and elsewhere in Germany, there is much to embrace in the present. Whatever the parallels, I do not hold out for any lessens drawn for Israelis and Palestinians, not because it is about an “existential question” (although it is), but more simply because the conflict is between current, as well as past generations.
The German “Miracle” described above, got its start with effective and determined “re-education”. Are Israelis and Palestinians ready for that?
Unlike Jack Kennedy’s proclamations I am neither a Berliner nor a Donut, but I wouldn’t mind… being resident/extended visitor anyway. Then again, if we were Turks or Roma….
Mike Sky
I agree with every word. I have visited the same spots and had similar experiences in the vicinity of the Oranienburg Synagogue… The “re-education” was largely due to the lifting of the inhibitions (thanks not least to the media), which had blocked an understanding of the past, after half a century and the massive, self-caused destruction.