Non­fic­tion

Berlin: A Jew­ish Ode to the Metropolis

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2021

I lived on kib­butz Mish­mar HaEmek as a child with my two broth­ers in the mid 1970s. Every year on Yom Hashoah we were brought to the local Holo­caust memo­r­i­al, asked to stand in silence and hear about the per­se­cu­tion and death expe­ri­enced by our peo­ple at the hands of the Nazis, and be thank­ful we were now liv­ing in the Land of Milk and Hon­ey. I grew up with fear about Ger­many and the Ger­man peo­ple. Between 2009 and 2013 I con­front­ed my fear and pre­con­cep­tions and pho­tographed Berlin with an eye towards places where Jews were hid­den or deport­ed. I decid­ed to make a book which com­bine these pic­tures with images of today’s Berlin. The project shows the city’s dark past and bright­ness of today – a city of ghosts in con­tin­u­al renew­al. It is a sto­ry of per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion, the mak­ing of new friends, remem­brance of ter­ror and acknowl­edge­ment that life con­tin­ues. There are 135 pho­tographs and three essays. It is part auto­bi­og­ra­phy and part sto­ry of liv­ing Jew­ish life in Berlin. 

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