EuropeAnalysis

Fear and fury as German Jews debate October 7th response

Community remains on high alert despite practical support from the German state and political establishment

German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier hugs Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender during a meeting promoting peaceful coexistence between the Muslim and Jewish communities in Germany at Bellevue Palace in Berlin. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA

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Derek Scally in Berlin
Wed Nov 15 2023 - 17:38

Rabbi Walter Rothschild is the first person to arrive for his “Meet a Rabbi” event. The second person to arrive is a police officer.

“I just wanted to let you know we’re here, outside,” says the middle-aged officer, his head disappearing out the portal of the MS Goldberg, docked on the Havel river in Brandenburg, near Berlin

For weeks this self-styled “Jewish culture ship” has been touring Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, offering daily talks and evening performances to showcase the richness of German Jewish life.

While police protection is standard for all such Jewish facilities in Germany, the October 7th attacks have focused minds – and protection concerns– considerably.

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“I’ve had no threats but my daughters have both experienced hostility and lost friends,” said Dr Rothschild. Born in Bradford to a father who left Hanover in 1939, Germany has been Rabbi Rothschild’s base for the last 25 years.

His talk mixes Jewish jokes with deep insights into his faith and its basis on a divine promise. For him, October 7th has focused his mind on certain non-negotiables.

“I am not a fundamentalist,” he said, “but I will not let anyone tell us that Jews have no right to be there, in Israel.”

Audience questions only become more searching after the talk, in the cloakroom. Rainer, a 72-year-old local pensioner says: “I have spent my life trying to understand how Jews in Germany gave us such cultural riches but experience such sheer hatred in return. Even today.”

The last weeks have seen an emotional and often violent tidal wave crash in on Germany.

Synagogues have been attacked, a Shoah survivor denounced on the phone as a “Jewish pig” and Stars of David sprayed on Jewish homes and institutions. Israeli flags, raised in solidarity in front of German town halls, have been torn down or burned. Protesters outside Berlin’s foreign ministry, one report noted, chanted “Free Palestine of German guilt”.

Amid this rollercoaster of emotions for Germans who are Jewish – at 118,000 people, a fifth of the pre-Nazi figure. Some report small and large acts of kindness from friends and neighbours. Others are questioning their cautious optimism about the rebirth of Jewish life here – the land of the Shoah.

As German politicians line up to condemn a rise in anti-Semitism, and courts expedite hate crimes, Der Spiegel ran a cover story titled: “We are afraid: Hatred of Jews in Germany”.

While some German-based Jews welcomed the attention, others cringed at the seven-page framing of Jews here as a homogenous, fearful bloc. They were already struggling with friends and work colleagues who expect them, as Jews, to defend the Israeli government and its response to the October 7th attacks.

The struggle over differentiation in Germany saw US-German writer Deborah Feldman, the Berlin-based author of the best-seller Unorthodox, excoriate vice-chancellor Robert Habeck on a recent talkshow.

“You protect Jews in this country selectively,” she said. “I am outraged at how Jews are only considered Jews here when they represent the right-wing conservative project of the Israeli government.”

Sharing her ambivalence is Berlin-based US photographer Adam Berry, a secular Jew, who says German reports that frame pro-Palestinian protests as anti-Semitic are more a reflection of German journalists’ own struggles to separate Jewish identity and Israeli state interests.

“I have been to pro-Palestine demos and never felt unsafe or threatened,” he said. “They are angry at Israel and are angry that their demos keep getting shut down, which leaves them feeling like second-class citizens here. But I don’t get the impression that many, if any, of the people there hate Jews.”

Left-leaning Israeli author Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, also based in Berlin, has called for de-escalation measures to halt further waves of violence between demonstrators and police.

“We need to act to reduce the flames,” he said, “otherwise this will be impossible to reverse.”

That in turn is challenged by many involved in Jewish-Muslim dialogue, like US-born Rabbi Max Feldhake. He sees little to discuss in the near future, asking: “Who in the Palestinian community would be our dialogue partner?”

One of a new generation of German-trained rabbis, Feldhake says his Lower Saxon community was too afraid to meet immediately after the October 7th attacks. Services have now resumed, but with what he calls “massive security”.

Such practical support from the German state – and moral support from across the political establishment – is heartening, he says. But that contrasts with a broad ambivalence and silence he senses in wider German society, despite a “feeling of latent violence in the air, different to anything before”.

Amid the stunned post-October 7th silence, he senses a growing fear in his community that “anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine”.

“People in our community are afraid of what comes next,” he said, “and how bad it is likely to get.”

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