Well, good afternoon. My name is Jacobi.
I go for those of you who do not know me and I'm delighted to present a speaker today,
Professor Larissa Rummenigge, who is the head of the Sociology and Topology Department in Berlin.
Diversity. She's also obviously a professor at the department. Professor Remnick's research focuses on immigration and migrant integration,
cross-cultural relations, family, gender and health challenges that immigration entails.
She has published five books and a century of articles and book chapters, specifically on the issues of Russian Jewish migrants and global diaspora.
And the title of her talk today is the Israeli Diaspora in Berlin.
Back to being Jewish. That was the thing with the question mark, which I think I love.
So I have to be tied to this. Somebody would share with you.
Okay. I'm actually more comfortable standing.
May I? Yeah. I'm not. Not tall enough to be sitting.
You won't see me. And so. Good afternoon.
I'm happy to be here.
My visit was on the question until the very last moment, because of the travel disruptions and, you know, cancellations and delays.
But I'm here, thank God. And in one piece, too, which is important.
So I'm going to talk about the issues.
That was a subject of my research on my last sabbatical five years ago when I went to Berlin to study
what's going on with the then new Israeli Hebrew speaking community that emerged there over those years.
And back then, it was a very big shock both to the Israeli establishment and the policymakers and the wide public.
What the [INAUDIBLE] were those young Israelis doing in the former capital of the Third Reich?
And it was a big shock on the sound, the receiving side in the capital of the Third Reich.
They were very surprised to see so many Hebrew speaking Israelis in the streets of Berlin over a very short period of time.
The influx happened pretty much after 2010.
So as a sociologist and social anthropologist, I was curious to see what attracts them to to that place.
How do they feel there, how they encounter between them and the German society happens, if at all.
And this is what I'm going to talk about today.
I think that I have like 45 minutes, something like that for the presentation.
And you are welcome to ask questions of clarification as we go.
And then we'll leave the discussion to the end.
The only thing I would need is a glass of water. Can you arrange for that?
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So you see a couple of pictures, too, to set the tone of this discussion.
It's one represents a typical street graffiti in Berlin, which is about boycotting Israel.
And my visit happened to happen right after the big Gaza wars 2014, right when the anti-Israeli campaigning and street events were on their peak.
And the other is the pro-Israeli, the one of the holidays, probably the Independence Day.
The local Jewish community established the light performance,
putting the main symbol of the Israeli state on the Brandenburg Gate, which is, of course, a very symbolic place in Berlin.
So it's all very controversial, as you can guess from that.
This is one of the a snapshot of a publication in Haaretz, our progressive left wing daily,
that is asking all those questions about Israeli immigration slowing down despite fears of Berlin.
And the so called aliya is, of course, immigration to Israel. So it's an ironic kind of Berlin aliyah.
They can't be such a thing. And the questions that the journalists are asking, why they slowing down, what's happening to those who are there?
Will they return? So it's just a the issue is very much in the spotlight in those days.
And let's start from from a brief background on what are Israelis doing in Berlin?
How did they get there? Thank you very much.
Actually, the history of relations between the Jewish people and the German nation and the German capital, of course,
is very, very complex and twisted and burdened with a tragedy of the Holocaust that happened just one generation ago.
So basically, for the initial post-war decades, there were no Jews in Berlin and a very, very small remnants of the Jewish communities,
some of the displaced persons who remained in Germany or returned to Germany after the war,
and some immigrants to Palestine, Israel, who left on the eve of the Second World War,
the refugees from the Nazi regime in the thirties who wanted to go back for some reasons.
Why?
Because the German Jews were so-called victim, we call them here came because there were jackets and nobody else but the German Jews we objected to.
So they came. Some of them wanted to go back to, you know, to the heart of the European culture as they see it, to be to live in Germany again.
But we're speaking about a couple of thousand of people. So it was very small presence of former Israelis in Berlin.
And then the second wave appears in Berlin with the disruption of the nineties when the Berlin Wall falls down and the two German is stark,
the merger that took a few years. And this was a period of huge opportunity, particularly economic opportunity and adventure.
The country was tenuous and changing, and there were many opportunities for business, particularly with real estate, that was very cheap.
So many Israelis found themselves there. Not many were speaking about a couple of dozen maybe, but there was some presence, you know.
And so the way we are talking about this major influx, again, in relative terms, again,
we're not speaking about any mass event, but a more visible presence of Israelis in Berlin starts around 2010,
which reflects the third generation of the Holocaust survivors, many of them getting, by that time, German passports or other European passports.
There is an event that we are still trying to explain in Israel this session of passion.
I don't know of young Israelis to try and get European citizenship right.
Of their grandparents, because many European nations have citizen citizenship laws by ancestry.
And so the when they grandparents were forcibly evacuated from Europe during the war,
they agreed that children and grandchildren can get back, particularly German, Polish and Romanian passports.
And all of them are members of the European Union.
So once you have any European passport, you can travel and study and have social rights in Europe regardless of what's your passport.
So it is estimated that about 150,000 Israelis have got European Union passports recently.
And there's very interesting sociological research by Scott Kirkpatrick, who is trying to understand,
you know, to figure out why they do that and what does it mean for them. For most, it's just the insurance policy.
They don't use it, really, but some of them do.
And so some of those who went to Germany after 2010 have European passports, which makes it much easier for them, of course.
And but the push factor that was probably very central in starting this immigration wave was the failed social protests of 2011.
Those of you who are plugged in to some extent what's going on in Israel may have heard that nine years ago.
By now we had this big wave of national mainly located in in greater Tel Aviv, but also in other cities,
protests by young Israelis pretty much against the high living costs and social injustices that is known by the name, by the Hebrew name.
PRASHAD The milky milky is a meal, is a dairy dessert that is like ten times cheaper in Germany than than in Israel.
And so it symbolises huge gap in the costs of living in Israel vis a vis any European country,
particularly East German cities, because Berlin is an eastern city.
So it's it's a symbolic name for those protests that did not achieve a lot of change socially.
So there was a lot of frustration after this campaign.
And many Israelis decided that they have to look for, you know, for their professional and personal prospects elsewhere.
And in those years, Berlin seemed like a very attractive option.
So an estimated 15,000 of Israelis found themselves in Berlin, probably about 10,000 in other major German cities.
But Berlin is a major attraction, which is a number, you know, that is in flux.
And it's an estimate. We don't know actually how many Israelis are in Berlin, first of all, because they come and go.
It's for many, it's a sojourn. It's an adventure. They come and stay for some months or years and then they go elsewhere or go back to Israel.
And then because we don't know the exact numbers, because the German authorities are very reluctant to reveal them, they have them suddenly,
because everyone who lives in Germany for more than two weeks, I think, has to register with their address and get the piece of paper.
Otherwise they can't get anything, you know, and so they know the numbers, but they would not reveal them.
I tried to get them in the Berlin summit and failed because the German authorities
are very unwilling to publish any official statistics about the Jews of any kind.
You know, the numbers and Israelis are perceived as probably Jews over those years, particularly in 2014,
15, 16, there was a lot of interest in this emigre group, both in German and Israeli mass media television.
There were several documentaries, endless reports and interviews with those who chose to move to Germany because, of course, the this event,
this new migration seemed very counterintuitive on both sides, both for the Israeli establishment,
immigration authorities, government, you know, policy people, media people.
Why, of all places, Berlin, because historically it was a taboo for several generations of Israelis,
particularly all the Israelis who are closer to the war and the Holocaust,
even to set their foot on the German land, even to buy German products, to speak German.
It was a no no thing. You know, there was a huge disconnect between everything Israeli, Jewish and everything German.
And then the bridge being built suddenly the human bridge, those young people streaming into Berlin.
And then the German hosts were also very surprised about, you know, why are they coming?
What are we looking for here? At the same time,
the German government said the conditions of relative ease for the Israeli
holders of the Israeli passport to set foot in Germany for up to six months.
They could get a visa for looking for a job or learning German and then maybe continuing to study in German universities because of course,
the university. Jews in Germany are free of charge and everyone can study.
The only condition is your academic credentials and the command of German.
You have to learn German first because 95% of academic studies in Germany are in the German language.
So it is quite easy for those who are interested. It was quite easy, I assume that it now it's a little bit different.
They have changed because they have got too many Israelis by now. But back then it was quite easy to come there.
So there was a lot of media spotlight on this event.
And then there was a quite popular Hebrew book by a sociologist from the Hebrew University by the name of Gharbiya Ear,
who published an interesting book in Hebrew called Vasan in Practice.
And this is the law was not practical in practical, and that explores one particular aspect of the Israeli influx into German society,
the intimate relationships between Israelis and their German partners, a book that caused a lot of controversy on both sides.
But I cannot go into that right now. Um, my own research.
What did I do then? What? What were my research questions?
What I was looking for. So I was trying to understand, like I said, the mechanism of this Israeli migration.
Who is moving there, why, when, for how long, etc., driven by the concept of migration networks and then situation,
point and return, because there are waves of course in migration movements.
The in brief,
those of you who are familiar with migration research a little bit know that migration network theory is very popular in today's migration studies,
and it's very intuitive and very simple to understand. It means that people bring each other.
There are chain migrations, right? People who are pioneers, they start the resettlement process.
They are they have it the most difficult because they are the first ones.
And then those who continue in their path find that it's much easier,
easier to integrate and to learn the language and to find deployment because they and somebody else have set the food and build the community.
Community, and there are people who speak your language, etc. So people bring each other the friends and neighbours and colleagues.
And then it's at a certain point there are too many of the people of the same origin that are driven by the same motives,
and the ground is saturated or oversaturated.
There are no more cheap places to enter and there are no more job opportunities because still Berlin is a big city,
but still it's a limited setting for I'll keep talking about who those Israelis are,
so their missions of employment and making a living are quite defined and limited and they get situated
all the time and then people have to look for other places to continue their journey or to go back home.
So those are also the issues that I tried to figure out.
Then, of course, the relations between the host and German society and the chances for integration and real tenure in the country.
Is it a sojourn, an adventure for most, or are we going to stay that transnational lifestyle and continuing connections to Israel?
That's quite natural. And my it was a residential ethnography.
I just lived there, stayed there. I participated in activities that Israelis are part of, like learning German.
I signed up for the German language class and I went to the community events and you know,
the typical hangouts and the synagogues and and all kinds of places where
young Israelis come together in order to find answers to all those questions.
So what did I find in this investigation?
Oh, it's a very scattered scene.
When I asked one of my key informants some questions about the Israeli community in Berlin, she said, There's no community.
There's no such a thing as an Israeli community. There is speaking, said Zira, who of, you know, some Hebrew.
Okay, some of you do. Okay. So there's a there's a difference between Keila and Zira.
Okay. So it's zero.
So I believe and I certainly believe that because there are very few formal organisations or institutions, there are some that are in the beginning,
but mainly people know each other by hearsay, by personal contacts, by the events they come together through, etc.
And of course, the common ground is the Israeli citizenship and the connection to this country and
Hebrew as well as the primary language of communication that they give speaking,
because this is where we are.
Now of course the organisational efforts are being made to build some kind of institutions for the members of this community,
and the internet era makes it much easier because of course there are endless Facebook groups and in 2013,
I think just before I came, they started Spitz magazine, which was first printed on paper, and now it exists only in the online edition,
which is a Hebrew magazine of the Israeli community in Berlin, in Germany, basically, but mostly in Berlin.
There is the Hebrew library because Amir, who opened it in her own home,
and there are activities for the children because some of them also have children,
which will lead to see that the majority are single, but some have families.
And so there are groups for for for the kids to learn some Hebrew bambini, they're called.
Another organisation is called Closets, which are kind of Israeli words going to translate cause I've no translation for that.
And there are some art galleries owned by Israeli artists,
and they stage all kinds of events and activities and poetry evenings and readings and whatnot.
There are cases that were opened by the Israelis with Israeli and Middle Eastern food,
quite many in Berlin and certainly in the neighbourhoods where Israelis live,
like Prenzlauer Berg, who if you have ever been to Berlin and know the names of those community Prenzlauer bag, of course, is very popular.
Kreuzberg has many cafes, so there are hangouts where Israelis can come together and speak Hebrew easily and you know, it's a familiar food, etc.
And lately they also started discussion groups on German Jewish relations that are more academic.
They are arranged around the Humboldt University and Free University in Berlin, and they staged debates mostly in Hebrew, but also in German.
As time passes by, their command of German becomes better and better.
So some events are bilingual or in German. And the ones that I observed were, for example, dedicated to the debate on the circumcision.
There was a big controversy in those years, like 14, 13, 14, 15.
There was a controversy in the European Union generally because the European
Parliament passed several laws that severely limit ritual Jewish circumcision,
Jewish and Muslim circumcision, any circumcision. That's not for medical purposes.
The ritual ones. Okay. And before that, there was a big controversy about the ritual slaughter Kalala and Césaire, which are actually quite similar.
And Jews and Muslims like this, it's a similar kind of slaughter.
So it entailed a lot of turmoil and unease.
And, of course, the religious authorities on both sides, both Muslims and Jews, were involved in those discussions.
These are the European governments.
And this is one particular ground where Jews and Muslims living in Europe had this international common interest and dialogue,
because of course it's those ritual procedures are quite similar because Muslims are Muslim boys also get circumcised at later age.
But the circumcision is also an issue for all the Muslims.
And yeah. So why are they in?
What do we know about their basic motivations? For me, it's just an adventure and change of life that they seek.
So they come after the army service, young boys and girls who completed their compulsory army service of two or three years.
And they seek change of life. You know,
some of them go for air and big deal although how they would say that and now the big tours in India or in Chile or in Peru and all those long,
you know, exotic lands, it's a very traditional thing to do when you complete the Army service to take a big
backpack and to go to the far east of the Latin America for a period after a year,
sometimes a very long trip, usually hiking and, you know, usually in the places that are cheap in terms of living costs.
So that's a very Israeli thing to do. And some prefer to go to Berlin, to Germany, or to stop in Berlin while touring Europe generally.
Okay. Many came.
The majority, I would say, came from education or professional advancement.
Students of different phases, mostly graduate students, doctoral students, postdoctoral students, young scholars who got fellowships in,
for example, in the Max Planck Society, there's a network of research research institutes in Germany that grant very generous fellowships.
Some came for investment. There is not a small fraction of people who are in real estate because, like I said,
particularly in the nineties and early 2000s, Berlin was full of investment opportunities.
It's gone by now. It's too late. But back then, people who were smart enough, you know, to catch the moment, they they made a lot of money on that.
The other direction is, of course, thriving and avant garde arts scene, very cosmopolitan, urban New York vibe and relatively cheap living costs.
Like I said, Israel is very expensive. Some of my informants were telling that they could not afford continuing their education in Israel
because they couldn't pay the tuition fees and living costs living in the centre of Israel like so.
And they knew that in Berlin they could study for free given the learned language.
So that was one of the motivations for them. Some of them have German spouses or partners, right.
And among those who were driven to Germany, Berlin, by a personal relationship,
there's a very big fraction in my small sample of like 25, 30 interviews that I had.
About half were gay couples. So actually, many gay Israelis find that life is much easier in in Germany.
They can get married if one of them has a German passport or any European passport.
Then by marriage the other spouse gets the same set of rights, which is very important.
So it's the gay life. And of course, the gay scene is very rich in in Germany and in Berlin particular.
And like I said, because there's already a critical mass of Israelis that are there.
So as we say in Hebrew, movie covers, again, people just come driven by their personal networks and they stay for some time.
And if they like it, they try to stay for longer and to drive learn German.
So that's how it happens. And.
At least it's very much a protest, immigration just four weeks before the national referendum in Iraq.
Is the good news is Ken Livingstone back to.
So what we have here is the crowd that is young,
mostly single and mostly left wing and frustrated with the current Israeli political
scene that's dominated with their right wing ideology and practice for many,
many years has been like for ten years,
Netanyahu government has been in place and in a couple of weeks I'm afraid we'll have him again for another couple of years.
So there's no way of exiting this point.
So they they cannot take it anymore. And they are looking for, you know, for better life in a Western democracy.
And, of course, the leading course and labour market, like I said, because many of them are I'm not sure if this slide or not.
Yeah. Okay. So many of them are in in occupations that are very difficult for making a living generally.
So the typical categories of Israeli expats who live in Berlin,
they are students in in the language and wishing to get accepted to the universities, mostly at graduate level.
Like I said, post-docs and doctoral students and a lot of other young creative professionals.
I would say it's maybe half or more people who are in all kinds of soft, creative occupations like musicians, cinema,
people, artists, journalists, translators, all kinds of humanities people, you know, fashion people, designers, whatnot.
And of course, it's very hard to make a living and succeed in those lines of work in Israel because it's a very,
very small market, very small country, get situated very quickly.
So they look for larger pastries and larger scenes of implementing.
That is what makes success is always, you know, like like I said, the Israeli scene in Berlin became saturated.
So like in in 2010 11, there were enough, as they say, gigs for musicians and, you know, Stand-Up ists and, you know, comedians and who not.
But by now there are so many of them that every gig has been taken.
So it's not easy to to progress in what you are doing even in Berlin, which is a huge city, of course, but also something that I have to mention.
It's this particular moment is the Berlin is is hugely popular with lots of Europeans, young Europeans.
It's not only Israelis that came there.
It's a constellation of circumstances that brings there lots of Italians and Spanish and Portuguese and Greeks and,
you know, all all over from, you know,
the Southern Europe and the Mediterranean Europe, the area that is quite in trouble economically with very high unemployment rates among young people.
So a lot of young Europeans from southern Europe seek their fortunes in Germany and in Berlin in particular.
So there's a lot of competition also, you know, for gigs and for places to live and for cheap rentals, etc., etc.
Yeah. Gay singles and couples. Like I said, it's it's very common interpreted as real estate clubs, catering, whatever you want.
The mean age is around 30 plus minus two thirds are single or with partner, but one third are families with children approximately.
And I would say that by and large, it's quite similar to the Israeli diaspora in New York City or in London.
It's pretty much the same categories of young, mobile, creative class professions.
Okay. This is a very loaded question, of course, and very central question for the staff is the relations with the German mainstream
because they can't spend all their lives just within the Israeli bubble,
they have to get out, you know, and to face the German society, the German bureaucracy, which is very,
very difficult to to tackle and to deal with the German neighbours in the building when they when they leave, etc., etc.
So I tried to ask them the questions about how they perceive themselves on the German soil, in the German society,
given all the legacies and all the memories and all the family stories that many of them have.
Not all of them are of Ashkenazi origin, but I would say that 70 to 80% of Ashkenazi Jews, right?
So they have the stories of the persecution and the war and the Holocaust in their families.
But most of them said that they it's not an issue for them.
They try to disconnect between all those legacies and their current life in Germany.
They keep saying that it's not the same country, it's not the same generation.
The grandchildren of the perpetrators, the Nazi, you know, their Markt is one story and their grandchildren is a different story.
And then, of course, Germany has learned the lesson and took the responsibility.
If one nation ever took a full responsibility for what's happened during the war,
it's a German nation because like, you know, like never happened, for example, in Russia, in the Soviet Union.
They never could take any full responsibility for the crimes during Stalin's period.
Right. But Germany did this very hard,
historic work of processing their responsibility and their guilt and paying multiple tributes and reparations to every other country.
So it's all behind us. It's all in the past.
It's no longer relevant. It's Germany's part of Europe.
This is another very common theme, is that we're living in Europe.
It's not important that this is Germany.
And actually Europe is very much associated with Germany today because the German state is one of the core main states of the European Union.
It's the largest and the most economically, you know, stable stronghold of the European unity, pretty much.
So they they see themselves as as coming to Europe, not so much to specific the specific German context.
Um, yeah. So I would say that probably with the exception of a small minority of well
we're not speaking in statistical terms because that's a qualitative research.
Of course, like I said, I had about 30 interviews and many more informal conversations with Israelis who live in Germany.
Maybe one quarter of those whom I spoke about said that history is very important for them and that they are very much into
the Holocaust legacies that they go to all those museums and sites and memorials and look to the stepping stone and you know,
what is that?
Those stones that in stoppage time that they put in there in the streets near the buildings where people were taken from during the war and,
you know, look for Holocaust movies or books.
Those who are very much into it is a small minority.
But they say that we're here also because of that, because it's important for us to know more about it,
to feel as part of that history, to understand what our grandparents came through, and to see how this is changing.
So even the fact that they are very much aware of those legacies does not have a negative meaning for them.
They find some, you know, positive connection with this storyline.
Many tried to befriend and date native Germans and to be out of the Israeli circuit because of course,
for anyone who is Hebrew speaking, the most natural connection would be with others in the Israeli setting as I sleep.
But many make it in a conscious effort to step out of that bubble and to try to,
you know, to meet and befriend real Germans and start speaking German as well.
Of course, it's many, many times dependent on how successful other in learning German because it's not easy.
I was like struggling with that myself for like five months.
Came to the course with all the Israelis excited on the other end with very little German and many of my.
Meets young Israelis also did not learn much.
So because, of course, they continue speaking Hebrew most of the time, because they, you know,
they live in the big homes that are populated by all the Israelis and they are
brought to certain workplaces and entertainment venues with other Israelis.
And so they keep speaking Hebrew all the time. So they do not progress in their jobs.
But those who do, they really accrue some German friends and colleagues and feel much better in Germany,
of course, and then in some other workplaces like research institutes, for example, the Max Planck system.
The working language is English, so they don't even need to learn that good German.
But those who do not learn good German very often feel that their stay in Germany is temporary.
They're not really there to put the roots in the soil and.
Yeah. Some more about the traumatic past. Yeah.
Here, I want to introduce some variance into the notion of Israelis in Berlin, because there are different stripes of Israelis in Berlin.
And we have quite many of those who came to Berlin after spending some years in Israel as Russian Soviet immigrants.
Okay. So there are Israelis who are Sabra who were born in Israel and then they went to Germany.
And then there are many, I would say a third to a half of those whom I met were Russian origin,
Russian speaking Jews who resettled for the second time in a different country.
And they come with a very different legacy of what the Second World War and the Jewish tragedy means for them,
because the narrative of the war and the Holocaust is very different in the Soviet Union visit to Israel.
The Soviet Jews have built a narrative of resistance and heroism because, of course,
so many Jewish soldiers served in the Red Army and generally armies of the allies.
There were up to 700,000 Jewish soldiers. You know, people are not aware of that.
So and there are about 100 Jews who got the highest distinction of Bona as the heroes of the Soviet Union for their hero dates student during the war.
Right. So this is the kind of narrative of the war and suffering, the Jewish suffering that this in the Soviet Union was one of them.
Because, of course, I'm Russian myself, I'm Russian Jewish myself. We grew up in understanding the war as a story of Jewish heroism.
And of course, there is no family in the former Soviet Union, citizens of Jewish origin, who did not lose their relatives and families during the war,
because, of course, fully one half of the 6 million of the Holocaust victims perished in the Soviet territories.
This is also something that that is not common knowledge.
I would say close to 3 million of Jews were extinguished by the Nazis when they occupied the Soviet Union,
including the territories that were access to the Soviet Union just before the war,
the Baltic republics and and parts of Poland and parts of Pennsylvania.
So there was both the extermination of the Jews and mass campaigns of killing and the heroism of the Jewish soldiers who came,
you know, to the empty homes to see what was done to their relatives and their families and who were full of the wish to avenge.
And they did. So those two narratives and of course, the Israeli narrative is the one of victimhood.
There is much less. There is, you know, when you have the almost Soviet era.
Okay. We have this day of the catastrophic heroism.
But the way in the narrative, the story of victimisation is much stronger than the one of heroism.
And when they speak about heroic deeds, it's the Warsaw Ghetto Marathon Merit Ghetto Russia, the the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Exactly. And there is very little talk about the the the military efforts that the Jews were doing in this resistance.
So there are two narratives.
And the young Israelis of Russian origin, they have a very different take on Germany and the war and the relations between the armies,
the Red Army and they and the fascist army than the Israelis do.
So they are taken on the places and then the memorial size is quite different.
And. But like I say in the last sentence for all three segments of the and the third segment is those who are not Ashkenazi Jews at all.
So for them, it's not a part of their family narrative, right?
There's just something they learned in school and the textbooks.
But it's a remote history, and it's not something that has a direct effect on their life in Germany.
Here are some quotes from the interviews.
I came to Germany without any prejudice. Despite all the Holocaust education we got in school.
It was never because of my it was never really emotional for me, perhaps because of my Sephardic Sabra background.
It wasn't part of our family narrative and I never met with any prejudice as an Israeli Jew.
On the contrary, most Germans I met as colleagues and bosses were very friendly.
I used to have a German girlfriend and we got along very well.
I think when you come here without a chip on your shoulder, so to speak, you don't encounter any prejudice.
Of course, there are mental and cultural differences to overcome.
But then this is always true of immigrants, especially in Europe.
And this is the guy who is a professional opera singer and cantor in synagogues and an opera house.
Now, another motive that I pursued in this research is the question of whether those
immigrants become more Jewish when they step out of the Israeli context,
because, of course, the average Israeli Jew has this complex interplay between their Israeli identity and their Jewish identity,
and they're not the same. So when they exit Israel and come to Europe as a minority and when they become immigrants,
this is actually something else that I'm fascinated with as an immigrant who came
to Israel in the middle of my life and had it very high as an immigrant in Israel.
It's it's kind of a bittersweet feeling when you see Israelis themselves as immigrants who struggle with language, who do not understand social codes.
You know, so now they know how it is to be on Exodus, but train.
So does this change their self construction, their self identity as more Jewish rather than Israeli?
Are they getting closer to religion? Because of course, I didn't say that.
But 95, 98% are secular people.
They're not really religious Jews. You know, they never set foot in in the Knesset in a synagogue at Israel.
So what happens when they come to Berlin and become a minority of overnight?
Yes, they do become more interested in the Jewish stuff.
And I would say that mostly it's not because they are becoming more religious,
but because they look for social cohesion in the places that are connected to Judaism and to Jewish faith and lifestyle and rituals,
which happens to be synagogues and Jewish schools and Jewish community centres like all the venues of Jewish life.
Those are the places where you come and meet people like yourself.
So pretty much I would say that the reasons for those Jewish interests are more social than religious.
But nevertheless, they do populate the synagogues of Berlin.
They do go there. And it's very interesting that the hubs that the more popular with Israelis are those guys were, say, in Hebrew,
and there is no good translation of this word into English, counterintuitively,
those that are orthodox, that those that are related to kabab to the hubbub movement.
Okay. There are two Hadad centres in Berlin, one in the West, one in the east.
They're both very popular with Israelis, particularly the one in East and Alexanderplatz,
because the atmosphere there is much more open and friendly because they have that mix are known for their outreach attitude.
They're trying to get the Jews back in the fold, by all means possible.
Their doors are open to everyone. They do not ask any questions.
While the reform and conservative communities that are also, of course,
existent in Germany, this is the motherland of Reform Judaism of all places, right?
Of course they exist. They are much more closed and inside oriented.
And they do not open their gates to the outsiders who speak other languages.
So there are very German oriented communities.
They speak the German language and people do not feel welcome there.
So they come to the Shabab meetings in the east and west because there are about five or six languages spoken and anything between Russian,
French, English, nothing. German is not spoken.
That's the only language. You do not hear that. Pretty much a lot of Hebrew, of course.
Synagogues also become centres for social meeting of parents, particularly families with children.
They seek Jewish activities for their kids. They want their kids to be somehow plugged into the Hebrew speaking milieu,
picking up the language, picking up some, you know, ideas about the holidays and, you know,
the Israeli conventions and foods and songs and music to keep them in the fall,
to some extent, at least, this is the effort of the parents, which is not easy.
Like, you know, with any immigration, the parental task of keeping the heritage culture for the children is a very difficult task.
It's like swimming against the stream because the kids want always to be local and not to be different from from the local people.
Right. They go to the German speaking schools and they tried to switch into German at home.
And so the parents must have a big effort to somehow keep them in the Israeli community.
And synagogues are one of the places where this happens. And, of course, the other is the.
The Jewish schools.
There are several Jewish schools in Berlin and several for the elementary and middle school and one high school in in the central Berlin,
which many Israeli families send their kids to for many reasons.
Probably they are not the best academically, but they are considered to be more friendly and more soft and more international and cosmopolitan.
So they're even willing to compromise on the academic standards to somehow keep their children in a more friendly environment.
The relations between the local Jewish community. The initial demand there in Berlin are very complicated.
Israelis are not part of that. They are very much outside of this game.
But then the Berlin I hear the shoes commander is a very controversial organisation.
No, it's been involved in many a lot of negative media coverage of all kinds of financial transactions,
land speculations, real estate events and of course,
a lot of conflicts around leadership because the like most Jewish communities in eastern Germany,
they are dominated demographically by the Russian speaking Jews.
And this is something that I had to mention.
It's a topic of another lecture that they give about Russian Jews in Germany, Russian Jewish immigration to Germany.
But as a result of about 15 years of the program that the German government has established
had established to open the gates for the Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union,
they received close to a quarter of a million of Russian speaking Jews in Germany.
Many Soviet Jews were willing to go to Germany instead of Israel.
And of course, there was a very loud discussion of that as well ever since to 2000, 2002.
Every year, more Soviet Jews emigrated to Germany than to medallia to Israel.
Right. And since they came to Germany on the Jewish ticket, they were supposed to become part of the Jewish community and the Jewish life.
And it's a big problem because, of course, 90, 95% of ex-Soviet Jews are secular and have very little connection with religion.
So but anyway, the reminder, the the formal communities are dominated demographically by the Jews of ex-Soviet origin, Russian speaking Jews.
They have fights about having community meetings in German or in Russian, and they prefer the Russian, of course, in Germany.
And Israeli Jews are completely outside of all those competitions and wars.
And, you know, they were not invited.
They are not accepted when they even ask for some kind of a small place to build their library or community centre.
They were not given any any help from the community.
And so all the connection was stopped back then.
So instead they tried to build their own networks and their own small groups in communities like the Spitz drawing, for example,
magazine that initially was supported by the Shabab, of course, and now it's independent and they raised money by themselves.
So the Israeli Jewish life is an autonomous, independent network that has very little to do with established, established.
You might have some pictures about, you know, they have Iran slowly belittling the Israelis, setting Berlin upper left corner.
This is a Hebrew library. And because of use home,
that that was just a private initiative of one person who had the very big living room and she established the big Hebrew libraries.
So people started donating books and bringing books from Israel.
And there's a big library now that anyone can come and borrow books.
The upper corner is the Suburban Cafe in Prenzlauer Berg, very popular neighbourhood of former East Berlin, the first Israeli food cafe.
You see the sign suburban, the the green light on the upper part of the door with homeless and what else is there?
So, of course, you know you know what shakshuka is, you know, with horses.
Shakshuka is a lot of fried tomatoes, bell peppers, vegetables with many, many eggs with them and spices.
It's a certain kind of omelette found Middle Eastern omelette in the middle of a gay couple,
just one of the many, many gay couples who live there in the this corner.
This is a nightlife, one of the modern day LA nightclub where young Israelis come to have a good time.
And, of course, Berlin is very famous for its huge nightlife scene.
And people who come from Tel Aviv in particular are very hungry for a great nightlife scene.
And they have it in Berlin and. This one is, of course, the other kind of happening.
It's the anti-Israeli demonstration probably connected to the events of the Gaza war, when some Israelis who are very much on the left.
This is a minority that exists protest together with Palestinians and other Arabs who live
in Berlin in all kinds of events that have to do with the U.S. actions or against the war.
Okay. It wasn't like. 5 minutes.
Okay, let's see how many. Yeah, I think I'll make it in 5 minutes.
So what factors shape the lifestyle? We're always interested in stratification and comparisons.
Basic demographics, of course. I mean, age, sex preference, gender.
They all put them into certain issues of life, family status, whether they are single or partnered with kids or without kids.
A line of work and level and type of income, whether you have every now and then a musical gig and that's all you have.
Then you have to live in the cheapest possible place with roommates probably, or you have a fabulous job in there.
Max Planck Institute in your well set, you know, citizenship, if you have any European passport,
this makes a huge difference in when you live in Germany because you are you're entitled to
many more social rights and health care and education and unemployment benefits and everything.
And most Israelis do not have European citizenship, so they struggle the proficiency in the language and length of residence.
They are related to each other and of course, who you are in terms of your Israeli background,
Ashkenazi or Mizrahi, Sabra or an immigrant who came from Soviet Union.
Um, all of them have very strong ties to Israel.
With rare exceptions, their families are still there.
So they travel to Israel at every possible occasion to vote in the elections, to the holy days, to family events.
And of course, it it's it makes it much easier to have this transnational lifestyle when it's just 3 hours of flight
between the countries and when there are so many cheap flights now with easyJet and Ryanair and,
you know, all those companies. So you can travel all the time back and forth.
Um, most formal the events and keep very much plugged in.
The Israeli scene being very critical of the government rejecting occupation and supporting Palestinian causes mostly,
but they still cannot completely vacate the Israeli topics and preoccupations from their life.
Like one of my interviews said, You can live Israel, but Israel never leaves you.
Do you feel at home in Berlin? Another cold? Not really. My home is clear where I grew up and where my family lives.
But in Berlin, I feel well into my own and actually better than anyone here.
I'm free of any predefined identity labels.
Ashkenazi. Mizrahi. Left. Right. I can rediscover and reshape myself the way I wish.
Israel climate is too tense and politicised.
When I go back home, I get tired and edgy rather soon and want to return to Kreuzberg.
On raising children here and there that's almost lost on you has an image of child centred society,
but actually services for children are much better in Germany.
Kindergartens are less crowded and have more staff.
There are many free educational programs and summer camps, let alone child monies, that are much higher.
And of course, it is much safer here for adults and kids alike.
We visited parents this summer during Gaza War, and our kids were scared by the rocket alarms and the need to rush to a shelter.
You don't want to explain to a four year old what Qassam on the cloth means.
Qassam is a rocket and McLeod is a shoot. Some questions for the future study.
How will the complex nexus between Jewishness and Israelis evolve over time in Germany?
What identity will prevail? What choices will these new German Jews make in their social and intimate lives?
In their relations within the group? Outside the group?
How permanent is their stay in Germany? If they live, to which destinations do they get back home?
Or do they look for other places in Europe or elsewhere?
How the relations with homelands evolve over time if its former Soviet Union or Israel.
And which cultures, languages and ideas they will instil in their old children?
Because there is a second generation who. Here is my final picture of an Israeli guy who is from the States magazine, from their cover,
who is trying to read the paper, the Berliner Zeitung, with great difficulty, of course.
And there is a plague of homeless that stands before him that is out of the frame.
It's just not getting into the picture. And this child is looking at this newspaper and asking those questions, what is going to be with him?
Yeah, some dumb things going.