Frau Hoffmann-Bleiberg, dressed conservatively in shades of brown, waved an electric wasp-swatter the size of a badminton racquet. Berlin’s Jewish community, she was telling me, should return to its religious roots.
I was at a pavement table at her family restaurant, Bleiberg’s, in chi-chi Charlottenburg, noshing on gefilte fish with chrayn (horseradish and beetroot paste), washed down with Simcha kosher beer.
The re-emergence of Berlin’s Jewish community has gathered momentum since German reunification, boosted largely by Russians and Israelis. September saw the 22nd annual Judische Kulturtage (Days of Jewish Culture), with Jewish music, dance and food from around the world. You couldn’t miss the bold Kulturtage posters: a Black Forest gateau with a huge star of David in piped cream. A new confidence has returned, according to Noa Lerner, co-founder of Berlin’s Milk & Honey Tours. Even Frau Hoffmann-Bleiberg is adjusting. She now serves a ‘kosher” mineral water in designer bottles.
Milk & Honey might sound like a food business, but its guides provide expert tours of all aspects of Jewish life, culture and history. It now offers tailor-made tours across several European cities, and one in five clients are non-Jewish. Many visitors to Berlin want to see Libeskind’s stunning zig-zag Jewish Museum and pay their respects at the Holocaust memorials. But Milk & Honey can show you much more.
How did I feel about a Yiddish fringe musical, Miriam Daur, Noa’s business partner, wondered? Sceptical at first, by the end of the sweet, folksy evening at Bimah Judisches Theater I was full of joy. An elderly spectator sang along, egging everyone on, grinning and pumping his fist. He was a tourist called Basilio, I learned afterwards, from Buenos Aires, where he had performed in a Yiddish theatre troupe. Soon the irrepressible Basilio began to sing for a group of us. It was almost unbearably poignant to think that the SS once held dances in this hall.
East Berlin interested me more than the West. Here, for example, was Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind, which saved Jewish lives. Before reunification, this area was home to just 200 Jews, although you will find the old Jewish quarter of Spandauer Vorstadt here. Although they let the 19th-century New Synagogue decay to ruins, the East German state built the Fernsehturm television tower that looms nearby, a giant disco ball impaled on a concrete lance, taller than the Eiffel Tower. I was astonished by the contrasting beauty of the recently restored synagogue, with its turquoise and gold oriental domes.
The Jewish cafés are more atmospheric here than in the West. Sesame seeds floated in Miriam’s mint tea at Beth Café, whose tranquil courtyard, behind Tucholskystrasse, is beautiful. One wall has an ornate Star of David relief, a former synagogue site. And a few doors from the other magnificently restored synagogue on Rykestrasse is Pasternak, a café with the feel of a 1920s Russian living room, a non-kosher place run by a Russian-Jewish family. We had ‘Grandma’s cherry strudel”, baked by the owner’s 71-year-old mother, and apple tea.
In 1933, Berlin was home to about 160 000 Jews. By 1945 only 5 000 remained. Now the official figure is about 12 000, Germany’s largest community, although the true number is unknown, as many do not participate in the religious community.
But they are part of the culture. I followed a tip to Quasimodo in Charlottenburg for a brilliant gig by trippy jazz group Ofrin, whose lithely Israeli singer started out in the kitchens of an East Berlin kosher restaurant. Like fellow Israeli band member Oded K.dar, whose grandfather was a Berlin silent movie pianist before the war, her roots are here.
Miriam also introduced me to the hip world of Wladimir Kaminer, bestselling author, DJ and co-founder of the Russendisko nights at Kaffee Burger, where he plays ‘danceable underground Russian ska”. I talked to Kaminer over a few beers up in the East’s trendy Prenzlauer Berg. He spoke of Berlin’s parallel societies (East/West, Russian/Israeli) and cracked mordant Jewish jokes.
There was still one thing I hadn’t found: traditional klezmer music. But on Saturday the suburb of Konigs Wusterhausen held a Brandenburg Day festival, the streets crowded with stalls, and I heard a live klezmer performance: Yiddish songs such as Tum Balalaika with the backdrop of accordion, zither, bass and clarinet that gives klezmer its unique combination of joy and melancholy. Lager flowed. A mainly middle-aged German crowd tapped, clapped and cheered enthusiastically, and even sang along in Yiddish. As they danced in a circle to the traditional Jewish celebratory song, Hava Nagila, I hoped that it was a portent of a joyous future for Berlin’s Jewish culture. —