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"And this has left... how do you say it? A deep narcissistic wound..."

Interview with Christina Von Braun

Christina von Braun is the Director of the Kollegium Jüdische Studien at Humboldt University (Institute for Jewish Studies).


Daniel Miller: You are the director of the Institute for Jewish Studies?

 

Christina von Braun: There are actually two institutions, which should not be confused. One is the Kollegium Jüdische Studien that was created in 2009 and is an institution of Humboldt University. The other is a Center for Jewish Studies we are just starting to create and which will include other universities and academic institutions of the area. This is only just beginning now. I am the coordinator of the first and for the second, so far, I've been involved in writing grant applications for funding.

 

DM: Who is supporting this Center?

 

CVB: The Center will be supported, most likely, by the Federal Ministry of Science and Research. I'm saying most likely, because we do not have final consent yet. It's going to be a new institution, coordinating what is there already in Jewish Studies in Berlin and Potsdam and opening up new positions for young scholars on doctoral or post-doctoral levels.

 

DM: What are the interests of the Bundesrepublik in supporting this project?

 

CVB: The initial idea of the ministry was actually to do something for Islam studies. Islam studies is like Jewish studies, it is not theological, and it goes into many fields. The initial idea was to open this field to the education of Imams – not for theological training, but for the academic background.  Once it was decided that German universities were not only there for Christian, but also for other religious traditions, the discipline of theology itself, especially protestant theology, became more secular.

 

DM: Imams are being trained in German universities?

 

CVB: No, they're getting additional education from German universities compatible but not interfering with their religious training...

 

DM: So you can become a doctor of...

 

CVB: Exactly...  at the same time as pursuing your religious education; you can also gain an academic title.

 

DM: How many Imams have been trained in this way?

 

CVB: The program only just started ... it will take time to get installed...and years to see results...

 

DM: But this is an extremely specific ideological project...

 

CVB: … or anti-ideological. Obviously the idea was to help get conflicts ... unenflamed. Avoid conflicts, in fact...

 

DM: How does this relate to Jewish studies?

 

CVB: Once you start thinking in these terms about Islam, it becomes very obvious that Jewish studies could be funded in a similar way. Not that there are presently any conflicts in this area that have to be prevented, on the contrary. But it’s a matter of opening up funding for the education of rabbis to take part academically in secular Jewish Studies. In Germany today, about 90 percent of Jewish studies concerns History, Philosophy, Literature, Sociology etc., and only a small part is theology. This consideration is, of course, a very belated reaction to the fact that Germany of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries refused to consider Jewish Studies as part of the German academic life. Some great scholars of the nineteenth century Jewish liberal community tried to create Jewish studies at German academic institutions, but they were not accepted. The universities did not want Jewish studies. Die Wissenschaft der Judentum had to go outside of the German academic world, even though Jews were already very important in German philosophy.

 

DM: So the Center will also offer further education to Rabbis?

 

CVB: Yes... in Potsdam there's the Abraham Geiger College which is already offering education for Rabbis, and this is going to be part of the Center...

 

DM: What is the... central project of the Center?

 

CVB: It will be an academic institution, principally concerned with research. One topic is the whole migration business in Prussia and in modern Berlin. The long and complex story of Jews emigrating here, going through all of these cultural changes, and creating new identities. It happened in the nineteenth century, and it's happening again since 1989: Jewish Russian emigrants coming in and changing the Jewish community, but also changing themselves into a new identity. Another field is memory culture, obviously closely linked to the holocaust, but also to internal Jewish traditions of memory. And a third field is the trialogue between the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – an exchange that takes place not only on a religious, but also on a cultural level. Today, in all three religions, there are many people who don’t go to the synagogue, the mosque, or the church and yet define themselves as being Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. They have taken on what you might call a cultural identity that has its origin in religion, but does not understand or live this in a religious way.

 

DM: How would you define the Jewish experience in Germany?

 

CVB: I suppose you mean apart from the holocaust ….I would say that in general – and not only in Germany – Jewish experience represents one of the earliest and longest examples of transculturality, in the sense that someone leaves a place, goes into another cultural field, picks up some of this and integrates new ideas into the own traditions. At the same time these migrants leave traces of themselves in other cultures. Germany is full of cultural traditions which came out of Judaism and became part of German culture. And also the other way round. Jewish culture in Germany was very strongly impregnated by non-Jewish, Christian traditions, but German culture is also very impregnated by Jewish culture. This is something that many Germans are not really aware of.  Today, with globalization more or less the whole world is going through these kinds of experiences of mutual influence. From Jewish history you can learn how ideas of identity migrate, influence each other, and how flexible they are in fact. And also how conflictual identities arise through this process within one community. For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Judaism something was born which did not exist before: the practice of defining an Orthodox Judaism. At the same time, you begin having liberal Judaism, which represented quite a different definition. The community divided...

 

DM: When does the Jewish Question emerge in Europe?

 

CVB: As soon the Christian Church established itself as a state church, which it did around most European countries around 600AD. From then on, you begin to have anti-Jewish pamphlets and anti-Jewish writings. The first important pogroms started when the Crusaders went off to reconquer Jerusalem for Christianity. They didn't only fight the Muslims, they also fought the Jews who were living in Europe. So from 1100 onwards you had these violent movements which would appear time and again.

 

DM: And then Zionism starts appearing around the time of Dreyfus...

 

CVB: Even before that. It came out of the secular ideas within Judaism; the idea that you did not to have to wait for another life to have a Jewish... place. Especially in Eastern Europe, where many pogroms continued, this idea was already developed quite some time before the Dreyfus affair. Things like general education played a role. Because from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards, you start to have educational obligations. Every child is meant to school, Jews included. And so all of a sudden you have the infiltration of secular ideas into Jewish communities. Often through girls, by the way, because the boys would continue to go to religious schools. But the girls went to secular schools, and so they brought back home these secular ideas, and part of what became Zionism came out of these secular ideas, and created a political Judaism. Or cultural Judaism if you like.

 

DM: Are you Jewish yourself?

 

CVB: No. I was baptized a Christian.

 

DM: How did you enter this field?

 

CVB: I was very interested in the history of anti-semitism. And obviously when you start thinking about anti-semitism, you get interested in the relation of Judaism and Christianity, their structural differences, and you necessarily ask yourself: where does all this violence... against Jews come from? You start reflecting on a lot of things...

 

DM: Do you see parallels between anti-semitism and Islamophobia?

 

CVB: Many of the symptoms you find in anti-Islamic polemics, texts and movements have a lot in common with nineteenth century texts and polemics against Jews. I'm not talking about genocidal anti-semitism which came later, but of some of the precursors. Islamophobia is not genocidal, but a lot of the symptoms are very similar to early secular anti-semitism.

 

DM: It is interesting that anti-Islamic populist parties in Europe aggressively assert support for Israel...

 

CVB: They say they are pro-Israel. But if you look closer, you see their basic position is anti-Islamic...

 

DM: European Jewish identity was constructed in a situation of diaspora. Aspects of this situation also correspond to the Turkish population in Germany. Could you describe them as Jews?

 

CVB: There is quite a basic difference, because Turks have a country, a territory they consider their homeland – unless they have become Germans. Another point is that when a Turk starts looking like a Western person, i.e. the women discard the scarf or when a person speaks German like a native speaker, or when they assimilate to the usual norms of Western life, non-Turkish life, people will accept them. The bias against them diminishes... With the Jews, it was just the contrary. With the assimilation of the Jews, hate and racism grew ... that's a very big difference between the two...

 

DM: How would you explain this difference?

 

CVB: As you know, the Jews were there before the Christians. And this has left a deep narcissistic... how would you say it? A deep narcissistic wound in Christianity. The Jews have the Bible. But they interpret it completely differently. Whereas the Muslims, they have the Koran, and anyway, they came later, so they are a younger sibling ... there is less competition.

 

DM: You think it is a question of religious... epistemology?

 

CVB: I think the basis is religion, yes, transformed into culture. The secular world was not only constructed from religion, of course, but it is still impregnated by all these different traces coming from religious traditions. The collective unconscious is filled with religion, religious imagery, and symbols... But what is your own field?

 

DM: I am a kind of journalist...

 

CVB: Uh-huh

 

DM: I want to invite you to define a Jew...

 

CVB: Impossible. There are so many different ideas about the concepts of what Judaism. People go to the synagogue, but if they go to the synagogue, they go to different synagogues, and different rituals, and some don't go to the synagogue at all, but call themselves Jews...

 

DM: There is a joke about a group of Jews who wash up on a desert island, and the first thing that they do is build two separate synagogues. Many years later, they are rescued, and the rescuer asks: ''Why did you build two synagogues,'' and they explained, ''We go to this synagogue... and this is the synagogue that we don't go to...''

 

CVB: ... funny. But I couldn't say what Jewish identity is in Germany now...

 

DM: Someone told me that Germany is currently receiving more Jewish immigration than any other country in the world, including Israel.

 

CVB: Possibly ... or at least it did in the eighties and the nineties... after 89. I'm not sure now. There are people from the United States, and from Israel... there is a big Israeli community here...

 

DM: This puts Germany in a position of competition with Israel, and the Israeli project is to collect all the Jews in the world...

 

CVB: But is Israel the project of all the Jews?

 

DM: No – this is the problem.

 

CVB: I think that Jews who come to live in Germany don't come here in search of a Jewish identity. But for other reasons. Actually many only become aware of their Jewish identity when they live here. This is something Israelis often tell me. All of a sudden you become ‘the other’.

 

DM: I have a theory that the Israelis are not really Jews... because the terms on which Israeli identity is founded are so different to the historical Jewish experience...

 

CVB: Why should Israelis not be Jews? What is true is that there was a reversal of experiences to what Jews lived through in the diaspora. In Europe, Jews were not allowed to have land or hold property, or to bear weapons. Today, the Israelis are very attached to their soil, they have become very strong soldiers. It's interesting that a lot of the things that Jews were not allowed to do or have are things that have become very important for Israel. But then, that is not really surprising.

 

DM: Every nation builds the core of its identity around mythic images, and Israel, for some reason, has defined itself as a Jewish state...

 

CVB: All the nations are built around myths. Nations are cultural constructs that want to appear as ‘nature’. That’s what the word ‘nation’ comes from: to be born. As if nations had not always been a mixture of people who were born somewhere else! This is especially true for Germany. The European states defined themselves as Christian states until very recently and some of them still do. The idea is still very strong, for example, in Poland. It is connected to the way these nation states grew out of the ideas of Christian religion. It’s in their structure. So it's not surprising that Zionism, or Jewish nationalism would link itself up with religion... this is what happened with the European states...

 

DM: Christianity was somehow the ultimate myth, the way it was imported from the Middle East and became a European religion...

 

CVB: It was defined in Rome and Byzance, of course. And for the first three hundred years, it was sects. It was not a religion yet. All the dogmas were defined from 300AD onwards. It was then only around 600 that it became a national religion, an imperial or state religion. And that is already when these states started being Christian states, and defining themselves around Christian terms. It's really very interesting, how the concept of ''kingdom'' was defined in the terms of Christ's body...

 

DM: Is the lens through which you're looking at this primarily religious or historical?

 

CVB: Both. Historical at first, but if you are talking about nations, you can't get around the question of religion, because religion was the precursor that created all the nation states. So I think it's not surprising, that Jewish nationalism has connected itself to the idea of the Jewish religion. It's exactly what Europe did.

 

DM: Messianic Judaism is another element in the equation. The return to Israel is connected to the appearance of the Messiah.

 

CVB: Yes – that was the religious idea. Zionism turned it into a secular idea. And this was exactly what happened in Europe. The whole idea of the Christian state became the national-secular state. It's no coincidence that Zionism was born within European boundaries...

 

DM: You said you will be examining the trialogue between the different religions. How will you examine it?

 

CVB: You start by considering the structural differences. I myself am very interested in the alphabets. All three religions are based on alphabets, but they have different alphabets. The Semitic alphabet, in which the Hebrew Bible was written, was the first one; it was fully developed around 1000BCE. Then two hundred years later you have the Greek alphabet, out of which came the Latin alphabet... and that's the writing system of Christianity. And then finally you have Arabic, which is the most recent, which existed at first in a very rudimentary way, and was only fully developed about two hundred years after Muhammed. So I’m interested in the question how these different writing systems created different  religious structures... You have three alphabets, and three religions, and three holy scriptures, and there is a lot held in common, and a lot which diverges...

 

DM: It's interesting me that you, as the director of this institution, are yourself not Jewish, but rather a specialist working on Jewish culture...

 

CVB: Judaism has left traces in all of German culture – something Germany is only starting to understand or accept. That may be one reason. Another is the fact that I have been working for a long time in gender studies. There are a lot of links between gender studies, and anti-Judaism, and anti-semitism. Anti-semitic discourse, for instance, is full of sexual images. And when there are clashes between the religions or cultures – it’s often defined as a clash about gender and sexual roles. For both these reasons, it is interesting for me to work on this field... You also understand more about the culture in which you've been brought up in if you look at it from the perspective of another culture.  But obviously, you want, at all costs, that I have a personal reason? I do ... of course. But this not what our interview is about...

 

This interview was conducted in Berlin on the 10th October 2011 at 1pm by Daniel Miller, and transcribed and edited by Daniel Miller.

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