Our Cultural Program in June 2017

In the 1950s and 1960s, style icons like Grace Kelly wore the headscarf as a fashion accessory. Today, religious context is the main reason why women cover their hair. These traditions go back to ancient times, when status and fashion determined which women were veiled. Hair is still regarded as too intimate to be shown publicly by many cultures. Today, women in Judaism and Islam find new ways to combine their religious traditions with a modern lifestyle. Conflicts in masculine societies are inevitable; the boundaries of what is acceptable are under constant negotiation.

1 June: With Karamba to the Bundestag: My Journey from Senegal to the German Parliament

(Mit Karamba in den Bundestag: Mein Weg vom Senegal ins deutsche Parlament) Reading and Discussion in German | Part of the series "New German Stories"

"No, not you!" a canteen employee called to Karamba Diaby on his first day at the Bundestag. She had concluded from his appearance that he must be in the wrong place. And people still seem surprised when Karamba Diaby, member of parliament, responds in German and not Mandingo.

Through his humor, Karamba Diaby topples prejudices and reveals several forms of everyday racism in Germany that was "not meant like that." He tells of his birth country Senegal, of life in the GDR and his work in the Bundestag. And not least of his vision of an open and future-oriented society.

12 June: Peter Schäfer: Two gods in heaven. Concepts of god in the ancient Jewish world

(Zwei Götter im Himmel. Gottesvorstellungen in der jüdischen Antike) The Author Speaks to Michael Wolffsohn

"Son of man," "Son of the Most High," "Firstborn before all creation." Even early Judaism had many names for a second God in heaven. Peter Schäfer shows how this concept has been developed further by rabbis and Jewish mystics through the centuries. His pioneering book has us radically rethinking the popular perception of a Jewish monotheism.


Peter Schäfer is Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. Prior to this post, he taught Jewish Studies at Princeton University and the Free University Berlin.

A cooperation with C.H.Beck Publishers.

Talk in German.

19 June: Monday Movies surrounding the "Cherchez la Femme" Exhibition

Film: Mustang

Directed by: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Turkey/France/Germany 2015, 97 min

Lale lives with her four older sisters in a remote Turkish village by the Black Sea. The young girls' vitality is not always compatible with the limitations of a patriarchal society.


Original version (Turkish) with German subtitles

19 June: Before the film: A brief tour of the exhibition

Insights into the exhibition and its theme – For Monday Movies visitors.

Please gather at the Meeting Point.

24 June: On Marc Chagall’s 130th Birthday: Fiddler on the Roof

Reading and Slide Show in German

Marc Chagall's "Fiddler on the Roof" belongs to the imaginary inventory of the vanished Jewish world of Eastern Europe. But how can the immense effect Chagall's shtetl pictures had be explained? Author Brigitte van Kann and actor Jens Harzer take you on a search for traces of the multiply broken reflections of Chagall’s motifs in literature. Also the prose of the time bid a vivid farewell to a life that fell victim to the upheaval and totalitarian violence of a new era. Marc Chagall and writers such as Sholom Aleichem, Isaak Babel, Joseph Roth, and Der Nister, who wrote the "Yiddish Buddenbrooks," captured what made the little East-Jewish city different from all others. They thus made the shtetl a European place of longing in word and image.

29 June: Religion. Fashion. Empowerment

Talk and Panel Discussion | Program accompanying the "Cherchez la femme" Exhibition

They call themselves Mipsterz or Hijabistas and they are conquering the fashion and lifestyle social networks. But how do young Jewish, Muslim and Christian women express their religiosity and religious awareness through fashion? Reina Lewis, Professor of Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, takes a critical look at the relationship between religiosity and fashion. After her talk, we will talk to the designer Meriem Lebdiri and other protagonists from the worlds of fashion and social media about identity and self-empowerment.


Talk in English with German translation.