A Jew Is Not One Thing

With their share of barely 0.2 percent of the total German population, Jews comprise only a minuscule group. About half of these 200,000 individuals are registered as members in the Jewish communities,and the other half moves about outside the official Jewish communities in more or less Jewish contexts. The two groups together make up today’s Jewish community in Germany, including secular and patrilinear Jews. In particular the younger generation of this group at times radically questions German-Jewish tradition up to now. At the same time, the establishment of new Jewish educational institutions has revitalized religious studies in Germany. Critical forums are also emerging on different discourses and questions of identity and positioning within majority society.

Our exhibition aims to offer an insight into this diversity of Jewish life in Germany, including snapshots of the everyday life of both religious and cultural Jews, who are either long-established or recently immigrated to Germany. We deliberately want to stimulate 
discussion to question the notion of what is Jewish.

Let Letters Lead You

Within the exhibition each letter of the Hebrew alphabet stands for an aspect of Jewish life and the giant letters direct your glance to present-day Jewish positions. For instance, we open the exhibition with the aleph and the video Twenty two (22) letters by Victoria Hanna; the bet takes up the bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah ceremony, through which boys at age 13 and girls at 12 become adult members of the congregation. Dalet, on the other hand, stands for “disintegration” in the exhibition, a provocative position of mostly young Jewish artists in Germany, who no longer want to be co-opted by Germany’s memory culture.

The Jewish community in Germany has also grown considerably in recent years due to the influx of largely very young Israelis. Although only a very small portion of them have any interest in the official Jewish communities, and very few of them wish to live religious lives, virtually all of them consider themselves Jewish. Through these Israelis the question as to the meaning of a secular Jewish identity has gained significance in Germany: Can Judaism be more than a religion?

Starting From Here and Now

It is no coincidence that the exhibition starts with aleph, the first letter, and ends with tav, which here stands for the Torah, as language and Holy Scripture are the two most important pillars of Judaism. What place do Hebrew and the Torah hold in Germany today? Hebrew was declared the Holy Language by rabbinical authorities, and the Hebrew Bible is the point of reference for all things Jewish. Jewish scholars have debated with each other for centuries over the interpretation of the Torah. Their discussions and decisions have been passed down through the Talmud and are not only part of present-day tradition, but continue to be debated even today—also in Germany. After the Shoah the Jewish denominations that had developed in Germany where exported, continuing in the twentieth century, especially in the United States. Today, however, we can observe these Jewish schools of thought returning to Germany: Large, often orthodox organizations are present here in the form of religious schools, but also 
grassroots movements are gaining strength by importing modern interpretations and their practice. This kind of debate is as old as Judaism itself and continues to take place today. It is a rare occurrence when Jews agree on a definitive answer. But perhaps a one-dimensional response is not absolutely necessary in these times in which religiosity seems to be just one of many possible ways of life, and secular “hyphenated identities” receive greater attention. At a sociopolitical level we are presently experiencing the significance of open debates outside of ideological trenches. Religious communities are particularly susceptible to the pressures of social change and are all the more dependent on engaging in an open discourse, not only with their own members but also with the vaguely defined circle of potential members, and on abandoning the narrowness of ideological echo chambers.

Or, to put it another way, quoting the Jewish Museum in New York: “A Jew is not one thing.”

Miriam Goldmann is one of the curators of “A Is for Jewish: Journeys through Now in 22 Letters.” She studied Jewish Studies in Freiburg, at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, and the Freie Universität Berlin. She has been working at the Jewish Museum Berlin since 1999.

This article was first published in 2019 in issue 20 of the print edition of the JMB Journal.