From Israel to Berlin, a flourishing Hebrew renaissance

Published: 3 May 2018

Last updated: 4 March 2024

ANTJE HAUßNER, THE director of the Betinna-von-Arnim library in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, turns the book in her hand over and over again, puzzled. She is trying to add it to the public libraries' catalogue, but the book is in Hebrew, a challenge even for the most determined German librarian.

"This is surely exhausting," she says, inspecting the pile of books on the shelf in front of her. "But it's brilliant. It is really fantastic what we've accomplished here!"

Last month, the first Hebrew books entered Berlin's public libraries, introducing the label "Hebräisch" into the German institution for the first time. Behind the initiative is a group of Israeli Berliners. They have joined a remarkable number of projects in the field of language and literature, all making Berlin more Hebrew than ever before.

Bringing Hebrew to Berlin is not only charged with historical symbolism. It also touches on baffling questions of identity. The cultural entrepreneurs who promote it go against the grain of conventional divisions, according to which Hebrew belongs to Israel and outside of it is only a diaspora of Jewish communities.

FULL STORY The Israeli intellectuals making Berlin more Hebrew than ever before (Deutsche Welle)

Photo: A group of Israelis in Berlin (David Bachar)