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Answer: “Date me and find out!”

Question in the exhibition “The Whole Truth”: “Are there gay Jews?” Answer: “Date me and find out!”
© Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Anina Falasca

Our special exhibition “The Whole Truth… everything you always wanted to know about Jews” is based on 30 questions posed to the Jewish Museum Berlin or its staff over the past few years. In the exhibition, visitors have their own opportunity to ask questions or to leave comments on post-it notes. We answer some of these questions here in our blog. To address the subject of homosexuality and Judaism, we spoke to a gay Jew and had the following exchange: → continue reading

During the week of October 21 to 27, 2013 the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin, in cooperation with Kulturkind e.V., will host readings, workshops, and an open day for the public with the theme “Multifaceted: a book week on diversity in children’s and young adult literature.” Employees of various departments have been vigorously reading, discussing, and preparing a selection of books for the occasion. Some of these books will be introduced here over the course of the next few months. In order to be able to recommend books, we had to choose a focus and select appropriate books. It was clear from the start that finding good books about migration and coexistence was important to us. And we also considered the meaning of religion as a topic. Interestingly, everyone in our reading group agreed that we should include books with Islamic themes as well as Jewish ones. At the beginning, we hesitated as to whether to add books about Christianity, but ultimately decided to select narrative children’s and young adult books that represent all three religions. And we hope to be able to recommend a number of them.

It was in this context that I came across the book, Wo bitte geht’s zu Gott?, fragte das kleine Ferkel (Which is the Way to God, Please? Little Piglet Asked) by Michael Schmidt-Salomon with pictures by Helge Nyncke. → continue reading

A Novel – Not Just for Grown-ups

During the week of October 21 to 27, 2013 the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin, in cooperation with Kulturkind e.V., will host readings, workshops, and an open day for the public with the theme “Multifaceted: a book week on diversity in children’s and young adult literature.” Employees of various departments have been vigorously reading, discussing, and preparing a selection of books for the occasion. Some of these books will be introduced here over the course of the next few months.

The Hohenemser Literature Prize was recently given for the third time, an award bestowed upon German-language writers whose native language isn’t German. The call for submissions reads:

“In a convincing literary way, these writers should address not only emigrant experiences but also the intertwining of different cultural traditions and biographical influences. With a free choice of subjects, they will acknowledge the background of a continuously changing present – a present in which language, literature, and identity itself, can in no way be considered constants.”

The first prizewinner, in 2009, was Michael Stavaric, the author of Gaggalagu. This year the prize was given to Sasa Stanisic, who was born in 1978 in Bosnian Visegrad and moved to Germany in 1992 as a refugee of the civil war.

In his first published novel from the year 2006, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone, his hero Aleksandar Krsmanovic – “Comrade in Chief of the unfinished” – tells heart-wrenching stories full of black humor, narrated in the brightest colors, about life in Visegrad. → continue reading