Tagged Berlin

Soviet immigration, once a bane of Germany’s Jews, has become their salvation

Children stick white roses into a Star of David sculpture at the construction site of a new synagogue in Potsdam, Germany, Nov. 9, 2018, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom. (Bernd Settnik/AFP/Getty Images)
December 10, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

MUNICH (JTA) — Weeks after they emigrated from Russia and moved to Germany, the Nedlin family sought to join the local Jewish community. Registering for membership in a Jewish community — a practice common in European countries — was a significant step for the Nedlins, who before emigrating in 1992… Read more »

Does Berlin’s mayor belong on Wiesenthal Center’s top 10 list for anti-Semitism? Local leaders say no.

Berlin Mayor Michael Muller, right, speaks with Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal in Berlin, July 19, 2017. (Matthias Nareyek/Pool/Getty Images)
September 1, 2017 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

(JTA) — Berlin’s mayor, many local Jewish leaders agree, could do more to counter the city’s vocal BDS movement. But does that make him an anti-Semite? A report that the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center may include Mayor Michael Müller on its annual list of the world’s 10 worst cases… Read more »

This Israeli and Palestinian duo owns Berlin’s hippest hummus joint

Jalil Dabit, left, an Arab Christian from Ramle, and Oz Ben David, who grew up Jewish in Beersheba, opened the restaurant together. (Toby Axelrod)
September 3, 2016 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

BERLIN (JTA) – In a corner of former East Berlin, where shabby, red brick buildings meet cobblestone streets, lies a new Promised Land. Kanaan — a casual, vegetarian Middle Eastern restaurant named for the biblical lands before they were conquered by the Israelites — is something of a dream come true. And that’s not just… Read more »

Berlin and Omaha’s incredible new synagogue-mosque-church

From left, Pastor Gregor Hohberg, Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin and Imam Kadir Sanci. (Courtesy of the House of One)
December 24, 2015 / Abby Sher (Jewniverse via JTA

 A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar… Actually, this isn’t a joke or a bar. It’s an extraordinary new building called the House of One, which will combine a mosque, a synagogue and a church in Petriplatz, also known as “the medieval birthplace of Berlin.” Yes,… Read more »

A transformed Berlin beckons to Jewish Federation representatives

Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on Feb. 19. “The photo,” he says, “does not even begin to capture the power of walking through and finding the pillars dwarfing you as they grow to 15 feet in the center of the installation.”
March 19, 2015 / Stuart Mellan, Special to the AJP

I sat between Grandmother and Aunt Etta. I never had a chance. Grandmother would point to her forearm, the numbers tattooed there … and that’s how I learned to count.   I sat between Grandmother and Aunt Etta. Between spoonfuls of regret they fed me: “From this you shouldn’t… Read more »

Expected far-right surge in European elections raises worries
May 20, 2014 / Toby Axelrod, JTA
Some 250 supporters of the far-right National Democratic Party marching on May Day in Rostock, Germany, are accompanied by riot police, May 1, 2014. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

BERLIN (JTA) — Armed with ropes and long sticks, a group of teens in Germany’s capital headed out under the cover of night. Their goal: to tear down from lampposts the campaign posters of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. The young people are one small posse among those who… Read more »

Israeli-Iranian DJ group spins for peace in Berlin
November 18, 2013 / Boaz Arad, JTA
Roy Siny, left, and Reza Khani are the founders of the Iranian-Israeli party collective No Beef. (Boaz Arad)

BERLIN (JTA) — It’s 4 a.m. at the famous Kater Holzig club and hundreds of beautiful young people are going crazy on the dance floor to the sound of heavy electronic beats. To the casual clubber, it’s just another ordinary night out in Europe’s hottest city. But this gathering… Read more »