Hebrew Scene

Compiled by Gadi Goldberg
  • 1. Mikan Ve’eylakh – Magazine for diasporic Hebrew, Berlin-Paris
  • 2. Hebrew public library initiative: Bettina-von-Arnim-Bibliothek
  • 3. Ha’Gimnassia: Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg
  • 4. Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri
  • 5. Berlin State Library—Hebrew manuscripts
  • 6. Writing Workshop—Writing Hebrew in Berlin
  • 7. Spitz – The Hebrew magazine in Berlin
  • 8. Seret
  • 9. Zusammen Berlin
  • 10. Berale – a children’s magazine
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Gadi Goldberg

Gadi Goldberg was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1972. He studied Chemistry in Haifa, and Literature and Philosophy in Tel Aviv, Munich and Berlin. He is living in Germany since 2002, where he moved to the south at first, and then to Berlin in 2004. In 2005, he participated in the summer academy and 2012 in the meeting of translators at the LCB. Since 2011, he organizes and runs the German-Hebrew Translators Workshop Vice-Versa in collaboration with Anne Birkenhauer. He is currently living and working in Berlin as a literary translator with the main areas prose and philosophy.

Foreword

The history of the Hebrew language in Berlin is hundreds of years old. It’s no exaggeration to say that Berlin played an enormously important role in the development of modern Hebrew.

The first modern magazine in Hebrew was published in Berlin in 1755 by Moses Mendelssohn, who had moved to Berlin from his hometown of Dessau only two years before, and was just taking his first steps in the Berlin intellectual milieu. The magazine dealt with aesthetics and ethics, and was committed to the values of the Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment. Publication was halted a short time later—according to some sources because of vehement opposition from the city’s rabbis—yet had a major influence on the “Assemblers,” the most important Hebrew magazine of the Haskala, which was founded in Königsberg in 1784, and published from 1786 on in Berlin, the center of the Haskala. This important magazine gave an entire generation of Jewish Enlightenment intellectuals their name as the “Assembler generation.”

In the 19th century, Hebrew literature was strongly influenced by the Haskala: the age of modern Hebrew literature had begun. Berlin had by then lost its status as leading Hebrew center to cities in Eastern Europe, but literature in Hebrew continued to be produced in Berlin.

But Berlin’s highpoint as a center of Hebrew literature came during the Weimar Republic. After the First World War, prices for paper and printing were apparently so low that nearly all the Hebrew publishing houses from Middle and Eastern Europe moved to Berlin. With the publishers and their literary magazines came the authors, and in the 1920’s Berlin became the city with the most Hebrew magazines, publishers, and printers worldwide. Anyone who was anyone in the Hebrew literature scene came to Berlin—some for only a few months, some for years. Thus an incomparable Hebrew literature scene flourished, with literary magazines, events, a Hebrew cultural center, and even an international Hebrew association, which was founded in 1931, and still exists today, organizing conferences worldwide on the subject of Hebrew.

This all came to a tragic end with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Berlin’s thriving Hebrew literature scene was destroyed in one fell swoop and has never recovered, since the center of this literature shifted with most of its authors to Palestine and later Israel.

Today, one can see that Hebrew literature is slowly returning to Berlin. With the thousands of Israelis who have moved to the city, and the increasing interest in the Hebrew language among the German population as a whole, the need for a Hebrew cultural scene has been growing, and its beginnings are traced below.

Mikan Ve’eylakh – Zeitschrift für diasporisches Hebräisch, Berlin-Paris

Weserstraße 57
12045 Berlin

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1. Mikan Ve’eylakh – Magazine for diasporic Hebrew, Berlin-Paris

The magazine Mikan Ve’eylakh (“from here/now on”), whose issues are called “assemblers,” picks up on this tradition. This literary-theoretical magazine understands Hebrew as a diasporic world language that’s not bound to a specific territory. It’s the first magazine in Hebrew to be published in Berlin since the Second World War. The issues are divided into three sections: articles, prose, and poetry. The goal of founder and publisher Tal Hever-Chibowsky is to bring together Hebrew discourses that are scattered in place and time in order then to influence them from Berlin, a place of historical significance. The editors organize readings to launch each issue, thereby giving Hebrew a life and presence beyond the printed page.

Initiative „Öffentliche hebräische Bibliothek": Bettina-von-Arnim-Bibliothek

Schönhauser Allee 75
10439 Berlin

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2. Hebrew public library initiative: Bettina-von-Arnim-Bibliothek

The Bettina-von-Arnim Bibliothek in Prenzlauerberg is the first public library to build up a collection of Hebrew books in recent years. This is thanks to the initiative of a group of Berlin Israelis who want to make Hebrew literature (original and translated fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature) available through the Berlin public libraries. Over the course of about a year, over 500 books were collected and donated to the library. They were then catalogued with the help of Hebrew readers. They have been available for loan since March 2018.

The initiative has already collected 500 more books, which are to be catalogued at another library and made available to a wide public. Thus, a Berlin-wide Hebrew collection is to be built up over the next years.

Ha’Gimnassia: Selma Stern Zentrum für jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg

Sophienstraße 22a
10178 Berlin

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3. Ha’Gimnassia: Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg

Ha’Gimnassia (“the Hebrew high school”) existed until the end of 2016 and offered a space for lectures and discussions in Hebrew about Hebrew and Jewish culture. Once a month, an evening was organized with three to five talks and subsequent discussions in Hebrew. The founders aimed at realizing the potential that Berlin developed over the past years as one of the most important centers of Hebrew thought and culture worldwide.

The lectures ranged thematically from current Jewish themes like the fight over circumcision in German society, to literary and artistic topics like the Hebrew literary republic between Berlin and Vienna and non-European Jewish artists in Berlin, to societal themes like Jewish women in Germany, refugees in Berlin, or forbidden German thinkers in Jewish culture.

4. Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri

Beginning in the early 1920’s, this address was home to Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri, the “house of the Hebrew people.” Until the Nazi takeover, this was the center of Hebrew cultural life in the city. In fact, Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri understood itself as a center and point of contact for all organizations outside of Palestine dedicated to spreading and renewing the Hebrew language. The organization was chaired by Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai, who taught at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin from 1919 to 1933 and translated the Hebrew Bible into German during that time. He was also part of a group of intellectuals who published a German-Hebrew dictionary in 1927.

On June 21 and 22, 1931, representatives of many Hebrew associations from Germany, Poland, the Baltics, England, and Palestine met to found an international Hebrew association.    

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Hebräische Handschriften

Potsdamer Straße 33
10785 Berlin

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5. Berlin State Library—Hebrew manuscripts

Beginning in the early 1920’s, this address was home to Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri, the “house of the Hebrew people.” Until the Nazi takeover, this was the center of Hebrew cultural life in the city. In fact, Bet Ha’Am Ha’Ivri understood itself as a center and point of contact for all organizations outside of Palestine dedicated to spreading and renewing the Hebrew language. The organization was chaired by Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai, who taught at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin from 1919 to 1933 and translated the Hebrew Bible into German during that time. He was also part of a group of intellectuals who published a German-Hebrew dictionary in 1927.

On June 21 and 22, 1931, representatives of many Hebrew associations from Germany, Poland, the Baltics, England, and Palestine met to found an international Hebrew association.    

Schreibwerkstatt – Hebräisch in Berlin schreiben
Janusz-Korczak-Haus
Rathausstraße 17
10178 Berlin
Kontakt: mati.shemoelof@gmail.com

6. Writing Workshop—Writing Hebrew in Berlin

Berlin authors Mati Shemoelof and Itamar Orlev’s writing workshop isn’t Berlin’s first Hebrew writing workshop: more than a simple writing workshop for Hebrew speakers, it poses the question of how we write in our mother tongue in the diaspora.Living far from home, in a foreign society, requires confronting a wide range of themes. The dialogue between the familiar and the foreign raises questions of identity on a personal, cultural, and national level. The language in which we write plays an important role.
The workshop aims to delve into these questions, and to illuminate various aspects of writing in Hebrew in Berlin. In the process, canonical Hebrew texts written in Berlin during the Weimar Republic are also examined.

Spitz – Das hebräische Magazin in Berlin

Liegnitzer Str. 19
10999 Kreuzberg

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7. Spitz – The Hebrew magazine in Berlin

The first issue of Spitz was published in 2012, and was the first Hebrew-language periodical published in Berlin since the Second World War.
According to founder and editor-in-chief Tal Alon, who moved to Berlin with her family in 2009, the major difference between the existing Jewish communities in Berlin and new immigrants from Israel is the use of the Hebrew language. It can take newcomers years to understand the German language, culture, social codes, and political contexts. Alon’s goal is for the magazine to offer Israeli immigrants cultural, political, and social orientation. Spitz was published in print until early 2016, and has since then been published online.

8. Seret

Seret (“film”) is an Israeli film festival that has taken place in Berlin since 2016. The festival is an international event, which began in London and has spread to other cities like Amsterdam, Santiago de Chile, and Berlin. This is the place to hear everyday Hebrew as it’s spoken today in Israel. The festival shows the best dramas and documentaries of Israeli film and television of the past years. Short film nights are also included in the program.
The festival also includes an “industry day,” which is aimed at facilitating a relationship between the German and Israeli film industries.
In 2018 the festival was held in four cinemas in Berlin, with further screenings in Hamburg, Cologne, and Munich.

Zusammen Berlin

Bernauer Straße
10435 Berlin

9. Zusammen Berlin

“Zusammen” (“Together,” in German), is a meeting place for Israeli culture and society, which hosts workshops, lectures, concerts, and festivals in Hebrew. There is a Shabbos meal every Friday evening, as well as festive celebrations of the Jewish holidays. In 2018, Zusammen organized a Hebrew poetry slam.

Berale – Das Kindermagazin


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10. Berale – a children’s magazine

Since March 2018 there has been a Hebrew print magazine in Berlin for children. According to the editorial column in the first issue, the magazine grew out of love for writing and for the Hebrew language. All content, including poems, stories, illustrations, reading comprehension exercises, and much more, is produced by the editors.
The magazine is meant to encourage children who grow up in various languages to improve their Hebrew and to love the language.