"Meet a Jew"
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Sana Kisilis and Karina Markhbein sat at the front of a classroom surrounded by two dozen young adults arranged in a semicircle. For many of them, the two women were the first Jews they had ever met.
“When you hear the word Jew in Germany, many people think of the Holocaust,” Ms. Kisilis said after the meeting at a museum in a former Berlin synagogue. “Our project is about giving Jews a face.”
Nearly eight decades after the Holocaust, Mses. Kisilis and Markhbein are part of a movement that is trying to normalize Jewishness in Germany. Their effort is called “Meet a Jew.”
Founded last year, the program sends pairs of Jewish volunteers to speak to non-Jewish groups—school classes, soccer teams, interns at the foreign ministry.
The goal is to help fill what many Jews here see as a gap in Germany’s remembrance: While German schools teach extensively about the Holocaust, Jews today say they are still not fully accepted into German society. Many say this kind of remembrance, very much focused on the past, does little to address their current concerns.
“Germans are very willing to put this very heavy weight on their shoulders, like, ‘We have this dark stain in our history,’” said Ms. Kisilis, 27 years old. “But everything about Jews is centered on that, instead of addressing problems for Jews today.”
The Jewish population here remains so small—at around 120,000 people, it is roughly a quarter of what it was before World War II and less than 0.2% of the overall population—that many Germans have never met a Jewish person, or don’t know that they have.
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Cool. Do I have any volunteers for my new Meet a White Person program?
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Funny, but there has always been a strong Jewish presence in the South. Locally it's Weiss, Kaplan, Schwartzberg, Wellan, Goldberg, Levy, Goldring, Levin...Those families have been around here since way before the Civil War, some have been here since the 1820's. There is a pretty large Jewish cemetery, and at one time, probably one if the biggest temples in the region (sadly, it burned down in the mid-50's).
frontDue to some internal disagreements, there are now two smaller temples, rather than the one large one.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@jolly why funny?
Plenty of Jewish history in the south (Judah Benjamin anyone?)
I once made a “pilgrimage” to Duane Allmans grave site in rose hill cemetery in Macon Georgia. While there I noticed a large Jewish section with plenty of head stones from the 19th century
Also a big confederate civil war soldiers section.
Actually a lovely place, for a cemetary.
