Trudy Gold
Germany and Jewish Identity 1750’s – 1933, Part 1
Trudy Gold - Germany and Jewish Identity: 1750’s-1933, Part 1
- Morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us this week. All right, it’s two minutes after the hour. So I’m going to hand over to you and as we trot out of August, towards September and towards Rosh Hashanah.
Yes.
Jewish Identity.
Yes. And this was something that Wendy and I discussed because in a way, preparing for the days of awe, whether you are religious, whether you aren’t, I think if you are Jewish, it is something that we do. And one of the important issues to grapple with is what on earth does it mean to be a Jew In the modern world? I often quote Elias Canetti, “There are no people more difficult to understand "than the Jews.” We have trouble understanding ourselves, let alone the outside world. We’re such a tiny speck in the world population, and yet, I suppose, we punch above our weight and we get so much coverage and it’s a complicated identity. So I also mentioned to you that incredible Chinese device. In Chinese, the word for crisis is represented by two symbols. One is danger, one is the opportunity. And that is very much, I think, the path of the Jew in the modern world. On one level, particularly in Western and Central Europe, not Eastern Europe. An incredible success story. And on the other, all the issues that are going to lead to tragedy.
Before I want to go any further, I’m going to recommend three books to you. These will all, once the website is established, they will all be on the website. I’ve mentioned them before. The first, of course, is Amos Elon, his wonderful book, “The Pity of it All.” Michael Meyer, “The Origins of the Modern Jew.” And the third one, “Einstein’s German World” by the brilliant Fritz Stern. Of course there are many, many books on every subject I’m going to touch. But if you want an overview, I’ve just, I suppose, given you the three books I got most out of when I was looking at this. So having looked at France and all the convolutions of Jewish identity, I thought the time is now right to go to Germany. And again, that notion that the outside world acts and the Jewish world, all it can ever do is react. So it’s changing circumstances in France, in Germany, in the Habsburg lands, that is going to lead to Jews having to rethink who they are and what is their place in society.
When we get onto the Russian Empire, which of course encompassed the bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews in the world, it’s a very, very different picture. And I suppose one of the most important things to say is you only really want to be part of a society if you find it attractive. And for those Jews who lived in Ukrainian villages or in villages in Lithuania, what was there to attract them to the outside world? And it’s really in the great centres, Paris, Berlin, all the great German cities, in the cities of the Habsburg Empire. Well, the outside world, once the chink in the arm of the Enlightenment, is opened up, then there is possibilities and we can be part of those possibilities. And for the Jews, it happens because of the spread of the Enlightenment. And we have to turn first to Prussia. And can we have a look at a picture of Frederick II, please, Frederick the Great, his dates were 1712 to 1756. Now, as far as the Jews are concerned, they’re not on his radar. Under his leadership, Prussia is going to become one of the greatest states of Europe. Please don’t forget the time I’m talking about.
There is no united Germany. In fact, there are over 360 city states. And Prussia is one of the most important. And it’s Frederick II, Frederick the Great that’s really going to bring it to preeminence. On one level, he is a military man. On the other level, he sees himself as an enlightened despot. He believed in the divine right of kings. He believed he was in no way thought about democracy, but he wanted to make Prussia a great modern state. Now, how do you do that? All those of you who are business people will know you need to educate, you need to create a mercantile class, you need to create a class of lawyers. You need to create all the infrastructure that will lead to a modern state. So I think his Enlightenment is as much pragmatic as it is also, that he’d certainly had a great love for the arts and the sciences, the new emerging sciences. And if you went to the court in Potsdam or in Berlin, you would find that all sorts of interesting figures gathered there, he was a creature of the Enlightenment. Now, what was the language the court used? Of course, the court would use French because French was considered the language of the civilised. Over the border, in the Habsburg Empire, You are going to see Marie-Antoinette’s brother Joseph II, very much in a similar vein, even Catherine of Russia flirted with the ideas of the Enlightenment.
So it’s very, very important. But please don’t forget, he’s an enlightened despot. He’s a conqueror. He had other minorities in his kingdom, particularly after his conquest of Silesia. One of the ways he enriched Prussia was to gobble up little states around him. When he took Silesia, it had a large Catholic minority. Important to remember that Germany is more or less divided religiously. The south, I would suggest, centred on Munich and Bavaria is Catholic. The North, Prussia, is centred on Lutheranism, Protestantism. He’d allowed the building of a beautiful Catholic cathedral. He allowed Catholic worship and also he had a Jewish court factor. Another aspect of this period of history, and I know many of you know a lot about this, we call them the court Jews. Practically every court in Europe had a Jewish financier. It’s interesting because his dates actually coincide with a man in Frankfurt, a man called Mayer Amschel Rothschild, living in a ghetto. And in that ghetto he became a court, he became the coin dealer to the ruler of Hesse. Hesse, very important, very wealthy because of the Hessian regiments, the mercenaries. And the point I’m making by mentioning Rothschild, at this stage, the bulk of the Jews are living in ghettos.
Frederick II decides that certain Jews are allowed to settle in Berlin because they will be useful to the state. So what happens is, you have a group of wealthy merchants and traders, including, of course, Daniel Itzig, who is really his court factor. They settle in Berlin, they don’t have to settle in a Jewish quarter. They are allowed to wear the same kind of clothes as the German nobility. They’re wealthy and they’re there for a purpose. They’re there to enrich the state. But because he sees himself as a man of the Enlightenment, he allowed other categories of Jews to come in. And this is from his charter, his charter of April the 17th, 1750. He allows a rabbi to be established, assistant judges, a cantor, mustn’t be married, , these are the people at the gates of the city who must report the comings and goings of foreigners. Any Jew who lived in any of the other 300 odd city states and came into Berlin for business or as a peddler to the trade fairs, had to report. Two employees in the Synagogal school. So the synagogue has established a school, sixth grave diggers, a cemetery guard, three slaughterers, three butchers, one secretary of the meat marketing supervisor, three bakers, one restaurant keeper, a communal scribe, two hospital attendants, one physician, one male, and one female bath attendant, the mikvah, a fattener of fowl and cattle, Eight attendants for the sick, two Hebrew printers, two teachers for girls, both must be married.
So we know that the community in Berlin, it’d be very small, even by 1810 it was only 3,000 people under 2% of the population of Berlin. So the point I’m making is it’s a small community, but you can see from the kind of individuals who are allowed into the city and to live there as of right, they’re tolerated Jews as opposed to the protected Jews who are the ones he wants in the city. They are obviously living a Jewish life. The mikvah is established, a synagogue school is established. And the charter also establishes what trades and professions Jews can go into. What are they allowed to do? What are they not allowed to do because of the competition of the Christian guilds. So to sum up, what Frederick is doing is he’s allowing a Jewish community to live openly in Berlin, mainly the very wealthy because they’re useful to the state, where the bulk of the Jews living throughout the German lands are in ghettos. And it’s at this stage that a man comes into Berlin who really is going to revolutionise Jewish history. I’m not going to spend too much time on his story because of course his story is incredibly well known. And can we see his picture, please? And of course it’s Moses Mendelssohn.
Now the key to understanding Moses Mendelssohn is that he is the first Jew in the centre of Europe to cross, publicly, from the world of Judaism to the world of the Enlightenment and to reconcile the two. He believed religion was a private affair. Moses Mendelssohn, who was the son of a scribe, came from the ghetto of Dessau. He came to settle in Berlin. He followed his teacher Frankel to Berlin, because Frankel was appointed a rabbi and he managed to get a job as a Hebrew teacher to the daughters of a rich silk merchant. And he’s dazzled by Berlin. And it’s not difficult to understand why. Just imagine you come, he’s a brilliant, he’s a gaon he was an orphan, but he was proclaimed a gaon. He was seeped in Torah and Talmud, an incredibly intelligent man, and of course, Yiddish-speaking in the ghetto, he comes to Berlin to be with his teacher. And already his teacher is beginning to look at other languages. You see, this is the point. One of the issues we can think about as we come into the days of awe, is what may a Jew study.
The Vilna Gaon, one of the greatest sages, he wrote a textbook on trigonometry. Many of the great figures in Judaism studied the sciences. They studied astronomy, they studied mathematics because they believed it further helped their study of Torah. But the whole purpose is Torah and Talmud. Now what happens when you begin to study the world of the non-Jews? And this is exactly what happens to Moses Mendelssohn because this brilliant young scholar, he had hunchback, he was not physically prepossessing, but he must have had the most incredible personality because people really fell for him, in terms of, he had great wit, great charm, and a huge brain. And he begins to be entertained. Now let me also explain that some of the wives and daughters of the wealthy bankers have begun to establish marvellous salons in Berlin where figures of the German Enlightenment, for the first time, had contact with wealthy Jews, and these wealthy Jews, they entertained lavishly and they were hungry for knowledge. And Moses Mendelssohn begins to meet figures of the Enlightenment at these salons. And can we see the next picture please, Judi? One of the most important figures he met was this man, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment. He’d already written a play called “The Jews,” and it failed on the Berlin stage because he made a Jew a hero and nobody believed it possible for a Jew to be a hero, so it fails.
He’s going to meet Lessing, and later in his life, beg your pardon, he is going to meet Mendelssohn, he is going to write his great work, which I know is still performed, it was at Chichester a few years ago, “Nathan the Wise.” So he meets Lessing, he meets other figures of the Enlightenment and he begins to study languages. And not only that, he begins to write philosophical treaties about the Enlightenment. He believed that, he began to believe, as I said before, that religion was a private affair and that there were many paths that led to the Almighty. He also believed in the , self-improvement. He believed that knowledge was one of the pathways to the Almighty. In fact, there is some sayings in the Talmud. One of them, we study for the study, for the love of, “We study for the love of study "because study leads to love of God.” But there’s another statement in the Talmud. “Never forget there is wisdom amongst the Gentiles, "but there is no Torah.” I remember years and years ago I was phoned by a friend of mine whose daughter was studying at and she happened to be studying both modern history and Jewish studies. And she was in a real muddle because her Jewish studies teacher had been very, very pejorative about Moses Mendelssohn. Whereas her Jewish history teacher had said he’s seminal to any understanding of Jewish history.
And she basically said, “What was he?” Do you remember when I was talking about Paris and the French Revolution and Napoleon? And I said to you that when Napoleon invaded Poland, one of the great rabbis, Zalman of Liadi, who created Chabad, he said, he actually wrote a letter to another rabbi in which he said, “I would prefer that my people "even be persecuted under the czars "than living in peace under Napoleon, "because Napoleon will be the end of the Jewish people.” So Moses Mendelssohn, at this stage of his life, he’s beginning to go to the salons, he’s learning languages, he’s becoming very influential. He writes an essay that goes before the Berlin Academy and it wins the prize, putting Kant in second place, as he becomes more and more famous, he’s known as the Jewish Socrates. He marries, he marries a woman called Fromet Guggenheim. And they have many children, I’m going to talk about them in a minute. And basically he still has to report to the police station because he’s only a tolerated Jew. Figures of the Enlightenment want him to join the academy, but the king won’t allow it.
But later on, after another prize, he is allowed to live in Berlin under special protected status. He is aware of the fact that there’s anti-Jewish sentiments out there, but he believes if he can improve himself and the Jews, and raise them up to the German, then maybe Jews could become accepted. Now do you see the problem in this? I think one of the issues with Mendelssohn is he looked at the people he met in the salons, he looked at their incredible minds, he’s still a pious Jew, he still is completely kosher. He’s Sabbath observant, he’s not breaking any of the commandments, but he’s falling in love with the German Enlightenment. So much so that he has the effrontery to write to the Duke of Brandenburg and ask him, “Why on earth do you use French in your letters "when German is such a beautiful language?” Hook, line, and sinker, as we say, he fell for what he saw was the best in Germany, the notion of bildung, the notion of cultivation. And don’t forget also the other word for the Enlightenment is the Age of Reason. And he believed that if educated and cultivated, people could all become reasonable. He was publicly confronted by a pastor called Lavater. And Lavater said to him, “How come you come from a downgraded religion, "why don’t you convert?”
And he was not a political reformer. And he answered Lavater in a very interesting way. He said, “If I met a Confucian, "I wouldn’t convert him "because he has a path to his God. "I am a Jew, "and my path is to the Jewish God through Judaism, "your path is a different path. "We can respect each other.” He was a deist also. He believed in God in nature. And as such, he believed that through education and Enlightenment we would also realise there were eternal truths and all the prejudices would disappear. So he’s very much a man of morality and the Enlightenment, but he looks at the people in the ghetto, in those downgraded lives, and he takes on board many of the attitudes of people who write about the Jews of the time, that they live in squalor, that they are hucksters, that they are money lenders. This is a fascinating issue, because the Christian world had forced Jews into artificial economic patterns and then was downgrading them for it. In fact, you may remember when we talked about the French Revolution, there were members of the French Assembly who brought this up and said, “We’ve downgraded them.” In the British Parliament, there were British lords at the time of the notion of could Jews be emancipated? Actually saying, “We’ve downgraded them, "we are the ones who set it up. "Let’s change how we treat them "and then maybe they can be men like us.”
But it’s seeing the Jew from a disadvantage. Anyway, his idea of how to change was, “I need to teach them German.” So how do you do it? You translate, you translate the Bible. And what he did was he translated the Bible and some of the commentaries into German, but using Hebrew letters, just as they did with Yiddish. How does he get on with the rabbis? They gave him respect because he made them, because he gave respect to the Jewish people. When he died, all the Jews of Berlin closed their businesses. Over 3,000 people came to his funeral. He becomes, as I said, he was called the Jewish Socrates. Nobody reads him much today, but in his time he was considered the greatest philosopher in Germany, in the German land. So he’s very important. Now, when he translates the commentaries though, he decides, he begins to omit some if he doesn’t think they equate to reason. For example, he omits Rashi, he omits Onkelos. So basically, is he tampering with the law?
Now towards the end of his life, various things happen. The first thing is, of course, Kant wrote the “Critique of Pure Reason, which he didn’t understand. Because this is the crack in the Enlightenment, it’s the beginnings of the birth of romanticism, saying that we are not all creatures of reason. All you have to do is to think about the human condition. I mean, I suppose the 20th and 21st century has knocked the dream of the Enlightenment. I must say I’m digressing a little, but I want to say I’ve got some incredible correspondence online. Some of you are absolutely marvellous. And I had a very cheery note from one of the groups saying, "Don’t give up on the Enlightenment. "We mustn’t give up on the Enlightenment.” And may I also say keep going with some of your letters to me because there are things that I’m discovering that I didn’t know, that aren’t in the books.
So please keep going. It’s wonderful. And Wendy’s promised that once the websites up these things will be, all these letters, with your permission of course, will go on the website. You will be asked about it. But going back to this, you have a situation where there’s a crack with Kant. And basically when Mendelssohn dies in 1786, it’s three years before the French Revolution. He was never a political reformer, but towards the end of his life, he writes other philosophical treaties justifying the Enlightenment. Or I should mention something else. He wrote a letter, there’d been a murder in one of the ghettos and the local Duke wanted an autopsy. And Mendelssohn was approached by the rabbis, who said, because of course, autopsy was completely verboten to the Jews, “Don’t allow it.” And Mendelssohn did write to the Duke and say, this is why we don’t want an autopsy. But he did privately write to him and say, “Look, there are certain parts within Judaism "that are outdated, that we don’t need anymore.” So was he on the road to reform? Anyway, it’s his life that makes it very, very interesting.
But as I said, he died in 1786. Can we go to the next slide, please? Now, Mendelssohn had many children. This is a letter he wrote to his friend Homburg, “My son Joseph,” this is his eldest son, “as good as given up his Hebrew studies. "A year later, he’s forgotten "nearly of the Hebrew you taught him. "I let him go his own way. "As you know, I am no friend to coercion.” Now what about, he had a whole group of followers. You’ve got to remember also the kind of world that his children were allowed to inhabit. His home, constantly visited by figures of the Enlightenment. He kept a completely kosher home. But his children, and you can see the way his son Abraham is dressed, it’s a completely different style, isn’t it? This is the style of a German aristocrat. So anyway, they respected Mendelssohn, but they began just to tolerate his attitude to religion. Whilst he was alive and actually while his wife was alive, they didn’t discuss the controversies out of respect. Mendelssohn’s great disciple, David Friedlander, who I’ll come onto later. He recalls the sophistries of the former, the insignificance and the pettiness of the latter, had already become objects of scorn in everyday life.
Yet nonetheless, in Moses Mendelssohn’s presence, we refrained from mentioning them either seriously or in jest. And this is the man who really became his main disciple, that’s what he said. Now, Abraham, as I’m sure many of you know, he decides to convert. Of Mendelssohn’s children, only his eldest son Joseph remained a Jew. And of Joseph’s children, some of them converted. Joseph Mendelssohn was the founder, Joseph founded a bank. And that bank actually existed right up until 1938 when it was destroyed, of course, by the Nazis. The family became very prosperous. Abraham went into business with his elder brother. But I now would like to go on to the next slide, if you don’t mind. Now, this comes from “The Jew in the Modern World.” And this is a letter from Abraham Mendelssohn to his daughter Fanny. Of course, he had four children, one of whom was Fanny and the other one was Felix. And I’m going to read this letter ‘cause I think it’s important.
“My dear daughter, you’ve taken an important step "and in sending you my best wishes for the day "and for your future happiness, "I have at heart to speak you seriously "on subjects hitherto not touched upon. "Does God exist? "What is God? "He’s part of ourselves, "and does He continue to live "after the other part as cease to be? "And where and how? "All this I do not know "and therefore I have never taught you anything about it, "but I know that there exists in me and in you "and in all human beings, "an everlasting indication towards all that is good, "true and right. "And a conscience which warns and guides when we go astray. "I know it. I believe it. "I live in this state and this is my religion. "This I could not teach you and nobody can learn it. "But everyone who has it does not intentionally "and knowingly cast it away.” Can we turn to the second column, the third paragraph down. “The outward form of religion your teacher has given you "is historical and changeable, "like all human ordinances. "Some thousands of years ago, "the Jewish form was the reigning one, "then the heathen form, and now the Christian. "We, your mother and I, "were born and brought up by our parents as Jews, "without being obliged to change the form of our religion, "have been able to follow the divine instinct "in us, in our conscience. "We have educated you and your brothers and sisters "in the Christian faith "because it is the creed of the most civilised people and contains nothing that can lead you away "from what is good. "And not much that guides you to love, obedience, "tolerance, and resignation, "even if it offered nothing but the example of its founder, "understood by so few and followed by so many, "by pronouncing your confession of faith,” this is when she was baptised, “You have fulfilled the claims of society on you "and have obtained the name of a Christian. "Now be what your duty as a human being demands of you, "true, faithful, good, "obedient, and devoted, "till death to your mother, "and I may say also to your father. "and at the end I embrace you with fatherly tenderness,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So Abraham Mendelssohn, and we are going to see that the majority of his other children also convert. Why? Can you go onto the next slide, please, Judi? Okay, Felix Mendelssohn, not only did Felix Mendelssohn convert as he was converted, but he became a very religious Christian. He married the daughter of a Swiss pastor, and died tragically young, of course. And he was the man who rediscovered “Bach’s St. Matthew Passion” He was one of Queen Victoria’s favourite musicians. He played often at court to her and Albert, and a religious Christian. Fascinating, the ironies of history. I will never forgive Corbyn for saying that Jews don’t get irony. One of the great ironies of Mendelssohn, of course, this religious Christian, what happened to his works under the Nazis? He was banned because he was a Jew. Now, why was this rush amongst a certain class to Christianity? How much was it religious? H
ow much was it that events were bypassing? Now, it’s a bit of both. The French Revolution, Napoleon. Napoleon invades Germany. I’ve already mentioned to you the German states, some of the German states, he takes the Rhineland, Prussia emancipates the Jews in 1812. But then Napoleon is defeated, Napoleon’s defeated, and in the Congress of Vienna, many of the rights awarded Jews throughout the German lands throughout Italy, are taken away. It’s the forces of reaction. They take away many things that Napoleon has introduced. Why? Because they are despots. They don’t want the ideas of the French Revolution. So ironically, many of these young Jews who have fallen in love, look at the way Fanny Mendelssohn was dressed. She was a very talented musician in her own right. And of course in that brilliant book, oh, my brain isn’t working today, I’ll think about it. There’s a brilliant book that starts, the Jews that change the world, that starts with the death of Felix and Fanny, I mean a brilliant composer, in her own right, a beautiful woman. She’s dressed as the wife or daughter of a very wealthy man. And her father, Abraham did become a very wealthy man. She’s mixing in non-Jewish society. But what kind of society? The Society of the Enlightenment. And they have this downgraded view of the Jew.
Mendelssohn had forgotten to instruct his children. Mendelssohn could walk the tightrope, be a Jew at home and a man in society. Ironically, I think this is one of the problems that’s faced Jewish education for the past, really from this period in the West. I know from my own family I was far better secularly educated than I was Jewishly. How do we walk the tightrope in a continuously changing world? And also in the period of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, you see the beginnings of the real rise of German nationalism. It’s not to come together, of course, until Bismarck finally unites Germany under Prussia, in the war of 1870, 1871. But you can just imagine what those years were like, all the stirrings of German nationalism and something else about the Romantic movement. The Romantic movement was also, if you like, it was against, in many ways, against modernity. If you read the philosophy or if you look at the art, the music, the ideas, what’s it about the Romantic movement? It’s about passions, yes. But it’s also going back to a better time. Going back to a time of the peasantry in the country.
It’s going back before the machine age. It’s against the modern world. And the modern world is seen more and more to be Jewish. And although the rights were not taken away in Old Prussia, in New Prussia, Prussia was enlarged after the Congress of Vienna, rights were not given. There was this push and pull that’s going to continue right through until 1870 when they’re finally emancipated in 1871 by Bismarck. So if you really wanted a place in society, it’s going to be very, very complicated. Take the case of the Marx family in the Enlightenment, in very much a family, a rabbinic family. Herschel Marx, the son of a rabbi, the grandson of a rabbi, the brother of a rabbi, his wife, the daughter of a rabbi, the granddaughter of a rabbi. He has become a creature of the Enlightenment. What happens to him? He’d become a lawyer. Then the conquering troops take away the ideas of Napoleon. He’s got a choice, go back to the ghetto or remain a lawyer. He’s seduced by the ideas of deism and the Enlightenment. And he converts his children, including, of course, he changes his name from Herschel to Heinrich. And he converts his eldest son Karl, who changes the world, maybe not for the better.
Also in the Rhineland was Moses Hess. His father, chose to remain a Jew and went back to the ghetto. Moses Hess though, self-taught, studied, finished up at the University of Bonn, breaks away, sees Judaism as outmoded, then breaks away from Christianity. He writes a fascinating book, it’s the sacred history of mankind by a young disciple of Spinoza. Spinoza, who was excommunicated in Amsterdam by the Mahamad for going beyond Judaism. So basically, this tragically, from a Jewish point of view, is going to become very important. And you’re going to see, look, there’s only about 3,000 Jews in Berlin, but particularly the wealthy, the ones who are mixing in the non-Jewish world, who fall in love with it, they don’t equate the Jews of Germany with the Germans of Germany. I think what went wrong, they equated the Jews with the highest echelons of German society and they fell in love with bildung. And when they compared that to the world of the ghetto, maybe they found it wanting. And I think with some of them there were religious conversions because the Romantic movement, some of them converted not to Protestantism, but Catholicism. Think about the smells and the bells or the ritual of Catholicism, for the romantic soul, it was incredibly beautiful and important. And it’s not logical. And isn’t Fanny Mendelssohn a beautiful woman?
And that is Felix Mendelssohn, the grandson of Moses. Interesting. So can we go onto the next slide, please? Now here you see Daniel Itzig. Now Daniel Itzig, he’s quite important in all of this. Because he was the court Jew to Frederick the Great and his son, Frederick William. And I’ll just give you a notion of his life, because then you see how it all fits together. He was the banker and the mintmaster with Veitel Heine Ephraim. He was chairman of the Jewish congregation in Berlin, and he was the mintmaster for the whole of Saxony. He was also a silk merchant, a silk entrepreneur. You see, courts needed what? They needed the silks of the East. Who do you think are running the trade routes? It’s like an interconnected group of Jewish families. And he was also the jeweller to the Prussian court. Now he worked with his son-in-law, David Friedlander, who becomes Moses Mendelssohn’s most important disciple. And he was also trying to improve both Jewish civil and social standing. In 1761, he established a school for poor Jewish boys. He thought if I can raise them up, and he’s not about conversion, but this man, I can improve the condition of the Jews and also how they’re viewed by non-Jewish society. And adjacent to the school was a printing house. And this is going to become one of the most important aspects of the growth of the Hochschule in Berlin.
And at the same time, he funds a Yeshiva and he brings a couple of important rabbis to teach the boys. He doesn’t want conversion. He dies in 1799. He thinks, 'cause look at his position, he can be a Jew, and he’s also a religious man. And one of the people he brought over, a fascinating character, called Hirschel Levin, in London, he’d been the rabbi in the Sephardi shore where he had the name Hart Lyon. And another man from Eastern Europe called Rabbi Joseph ben Meir, and he came from Lemberg and they were very strong students of rabbinic literature. So there is Yeshiva education in Berlin. Now, he had 13 children, he was the richest Jew in Berlin, and two of his granddaughters married to Mendelssohn’s sons. And of course there’s going to be conversion amongst them. The father tries to keep the line. Can we go on, please? And here you see Dorothea Mendelssohn. Now Dorothea Mendelssohn, she was the eldest daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. And she was married to the son of a Jewish banker called Veit. And she was 15 when she married him, he was much older than her, and she very much hated all the ritual of the home.
And in the end, what happens to her is that she runs off with a young German philosopher and poet called Schlegel, who she met in one of the salons. She hosted her own salons, and she was very much attracted to the Romantic movement. Her husband must have been an incredibly good man. The son of a wealthy banker, he was a physician. She made fun when they practised any of the Jewish festivals, she had children by him, and in the end she runs off with Schlegel, who was a very important figure of the German Romantic movement. And he was much younger than her. The couple moved to Jena, which was the centre of romanticism. And with his brother, the two brothers were really, absolutely at the centre of the movement. And she was baptised as a Catholic. And he’d been a Protestant, they were both baptised as Catholics. And he was interesting because he was fascinated by languages.
And he was specifically interested in the Indo-Iranian and German languages. He put them together under the Aryan group of languages. Think of the signal of the swastika. And unfortunately a lot of this kind of idea is later on going to be totally perverted. Now Veit, who must have been an extraordinary man, he allowed her two children to go with her. And both of them became very staunch Catholics. So, what can one say? Dorothea, she crosses over. Can we go on, please? And here we see the beautiful Henriette Herz. Henriette Herz, she was the daughter of a man called Benjamin de Lemos. He was a Sephardi physician from Hamburg. She was brought up in Berlin. She chaired a tutor with Moses Mendelssohn’s daughters. Her closest friend was Dorothea. And when she was 13, 15, beg your pardon, she married a 32-year-old Marcus Herz who’d studied medicine in Konigsberg. It was one of the three universities at the time that accepted Jews, but only in medicine. He came from a very wealthy family. She came from a very wealthy family. Her salon was probably the most glittering salon in Berlin. And if you think of the people who attended, fascinating couple of brothers called the Humboldt Brothers. They were very close also to Dorothea Mendelssohn.
Later on, they are going to form the Humboldt University in Berlin, which is of course the great liberal university. And those of you who’ve visited Berlin will know that tragically it was the scene of the book burnings. And there is one of the best memorials I’ve ever seen in my life. Outside there, if you look down, under glass, you see empty bookshelves. But it was the Humboldt Brothers, she was part of that kind of circle. And in fact, Alexander von Humboldt, who was an incredible scholar, he received Hebrew lessons from her and the theologian Schleiermacher attended, and they were very, very close friends. Now, Schiller came to her, came to visit her salons. So it’s really the place to be in Berlin. She and Dorothea, all these young romantic women, they adored Goethe. He was, if you like, they were responsible for the cult of Goethe. Heine, the young Heine visited her salons. If you wanted any future in the Enlightenment movement or which later became the Romantic movement, in Berlin, if you were an intellectual, you would be at the salon of one or other of these women. And what they would do is they would weekly hold their meetings. In fact, with Henriette Herz, she hosted the literary side. Her husband, who was an incredibly bright man, he hosted a scientific salon.
So you’ve got these two, not only was she stunningly beautiful, it was said that she was also very arrogant. A lot of people fell in love with Henriette Herz. Anyway, her husband died quite young, and she fell completely under the influence of the theologian, I’ve already mentioned, Schleiermacher. And finally, after the death of her mother, she converts. She becomes a Protestant, not a Catholic. She tries to reconcile the Enlightenment and Protestantism. She had an incredible education, Henriette, as a young woman, she was a brilliant linguist, French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, enough Hebrew to read the Bible. And as I said, she met Goethe twice. And he was, if you like, you’ve got to understand Goethe was the figure that they all aspired to be. Tragically, she later fell on hard times, And it was actually Humboldt, he was an aristocrat, and he managed to persuade Frederick William to grant her a pension. So can we go on one more, please, Judi? Yeah, now we come back to David Friedlander. David Friedlander becomes, of course, the major follower of Moses Mendelssohn. He settled in Berlin in 1771. He was the son-in-law of Daniel Itzig, which meant he was, Daniel Itzig was the wealthiest person, most wealthiest Jew in Berlin.
So he’s part of that very rarefied circle of really the glitterati, the Jewish glitterati. And also he has a very prominent position in non-Jewish circles because when he’s there, it’s still the waning years of the Enlightenment. And he’s an accepted figure. He’s clever and he becomes the main disciple of Moses Mendelssohn. But he didn’t have Moses’s intellect. And also, after Mendelssohn’s death, what he’s concerned with more than anything else, is to facilitate for himself and other Jews, a real entree into Christian society. He, in fact, came up with an incredibly radical proposition in 1799, he wrote to a leading Protestant called Teller, really, they called it the “dry baptism.” And this is what I’m reading now, “In the name of the Jewish Heads of Families, "Jews should undergo a dry baptism and join the Lutherans "on the basis of shared moral values. "If they were not required to believe "in the divinity of Jesus "and might evade certain Christian ceremonies.” He went on to argue that most mosaic rituals, “were obsolete.” And of course, this is completely rejected by the Christian theologians, but I think it gives you a notion of the sole agony of these people. They wanted to be accepted.
And there was a terrifying Jewish reaction, the great Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz, he referred to him as an ape. And there is a backlash, particularly Jews living in Eastern Europe, some of the rabbis, there’s a total backlash against this, that they are seeing this as something that’s very, very dangerous. Anyway, I think I should stop there. We’ve got a long way to go on the Jews of Germany because I think as Wendy keeps on telling me, go slower, because I’m trying to tease out Jewish identity and what was it about the outside world that made it appear so very attractive? And to go back to this whole notion of Moses Mendelssohn, can you walk the tightrope? Can you be a Jew at home and a man in society? And of course, we haven’t yet come to the growth of racial antisemitism at this stage. This is to be accepted first by the Enlightenment and then by the Christian world. And you know, it’s very easy for us post-Holocaust to write back into history. And I think they really did feel that that world was a world worth having. Anyway, Wendy, I think that it’s quite a complicated issue that we are stumbling into now, isn’t it?
[Wendy] It is.
And I think you, from your South African perspective, you mentioned this last week, you had a very different process of identity, didn’t you? Because from what I gather from you and my other South African friends, there was nothing really that you wanted to be accepted into. The Jewish world.
Yeah.
And I think, the position I’m giving you with the Germans, I think, is very acute. But a similar thing happened in England, certainly happened in France. We’re going to look at the Habsburg Empire. It’s this desperate desire to be part of it. And I think the irony is how far they changed it. They gave everything.
Yeah.
So. Yeah. So it’s a complication. Should we see what questions we have?
[Judi] Trudy, before you go to the questions, quite a few people have asked if you could please repeat the name of the books that you mentioned by-
Oh yes. Of course. Thank you, Judi. “The Pity of It All” by Amos Elon, “The Jew in the Modern World” is the source book I often refer to, but it is very expensive. One of the group wrote back to say, it’s very expensive now. I think if you really want to study deeply, you need it though. It’s a compilation by Mendes-Flohr. The other books, “Einstein’s German world” is superb. So is Michael Meyer, “The Origin of the Modern Jew.” As we go further into various subjects. And of course, Wendy and I have already said, all these books will come together on the website. And obviously some of you will have these books. You’ll know these books. If I only wanted to read one on German Jewry, it would be Elon, “The Pity of it All.” It’s brilliant. Also, I just love anything written by Fritz Stern. He only died a couple of years ago. He was in his hundreds, he was a brilliant man. He wrote a fantastic biography of Bleichroder, who was… So I hope you’ve all got that.
Q&A and Comments:
Yes, Fanny and Felix died so young, the same year.
Look, Talia, it is just tragic. Modern medicine.
Q: Where was penicillin? Where was all the…
A: Well, ironically, that was the brainchild of Alexander Fleming, but also a German Jew called Ernst Chain.
Now this is from, Denna. “Felix M. was very close to his grandfather, "kept the family name "instead of using the choice of New Germany.” Yes, yes, he was close, but he didn’t go, but he still became a religious Christian.
Q: “Were the ghettos all slums?”
A: Margaret, yes, I’m afraid. Because there were people crowded together. The one I’ve studied most is the ghetto of Frankfurt. And the tops of the houses almost touched. And it was the conditions, for example, in Frankfurt, the ghetto gates were locked at night and Jewish women were not allowed out to shop until the Christian women had gone to the shops before them. So, all the time it was downgraded, downgraded, downgraded. And many of those shops, people would come into the ghetto because they were secondhand clothes dealers, they were coin dealers. They were not allowed into many professions and trades. Now it’s fascinating, think about the Romantic movement and its attachment to the land. Jews were not allowed to own land. Ironically, under the charter of Frederick II, they could be estate managers, they could go into the property business, but they couldn’t own land.
So… Mitzi , “My mother disliked German Jews. "She thought they were snobs "because they spoke ode Deutsch "not the bastard Yiddish language.”
Mitzi, one of the tragedies of the Jewish experience, let me speak about England 'cause it’s easier for me. First the Sephardim, and they didn’t think much of the Central Europeans who came over and they all threw up their hands against the Russians, the Jews from the Russian Empire, the largest number. And then when the Germans, and Austrians and the Czechs came in the '30s, they threw up their hands at them. Every community feels itself insecure, I think that’s the point. I’m going to say, look, this is my view. I think we so want to be loved by the outside world, that when someone comes along who’s foreign, we don’t want to be seen as foreign.
And this is from Edith. “Yiddish is my mother tongue, 1,000 year old language, "and there’s thousands of books, poetries "and plays written in that language. "See the Yiddish Book Centre, "the largest growing organisation in America.”
Yes, Edith. Now, back in Eastern Europe, if you think about it, under the czars, the peasants weren’t, the serfs weren’t free till 1861. The Jews had a very, very vibrant culture of their own. Tragically, much of that culture was destroyed by the Nazis. But it’s good to know that it is reappearing again. But isn’t it fascinating? Another debate you could have.
Q: What is the language of the Jews?
A: I think more Jews speak English than any other language now. But then, of course, the Zionist said, “It must be Hebrew, "the language of our glorious past.” “Not so,” said the Bund, “Yiddish is our language. "It’s the language of the diaspora, "it’s the language of our culture.” So what is the language of the Jews? I must digress into something amusing. There used to be a very vibrant Yiddish Centre in Oxford at Yarnton. Towards the end there were more Japanese students than any other. As the Americans would say, “Go figure that one.”
“Genius and Anxiety.” Thank you, Merle. The brilliant Norman Lebrecht’s Genius and Anxiety. I interviewed him. I just lost it for a minute.
When’s he coming back, Trudy We need to-
Whenever we ask him. He’s done two sessions.
He’s fabulous.
I’m sure, After the Yom Tovim, he’d be delighted-
Yeah.
To come back, Wendy.
Yeah.
If you want him.
[Wendy] He’s great.
He’s a great writer, isn’t he?
He is-
And that course-
And .
Yeah, of course. “Please mention the author and title of the third book.”
The third book, I think, was “The Origins of the Modern Jew” by Michael Meyer.
“The Romantic movement, at least in music, "was anti-rationalist.”
Yes, Karen, that’s the whole point. It’s anti-rational. It’s saying that, you know, if you think of the Age of Reason, it’s the breaking up of the Age of Reason. Romanticism. There’s a wonderful quote of Heinrich Heine. And because, eventually I will be getting onto Heine, bear with me as I scrabble amongst my papers, my stupid handwritten notes. Aha. This is Heine. “Christianity, and that is its greatest merit, "has somewhat mitigated the brutal Germanic love of war "but it could not destroy it, "should the subduing talisman, the cross be shattered, "the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, "that insane berserk rage "of which the Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often "will once more burst into flames. "The talisman is fragile and the day will come "when it will collapse, "then the ancient stony gods will rise from forgotten debris "and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, "and finally, Thor with his giant hammer "will smash the cathedrals. "Do not smile at my advice, the advice of a dreamer "who warns you against Kant and Fichte, "and the philosophers.” Isn’t that brilliant? That is Heine. He wrote it in 1834. Okay, the prophet without honour. that’s another very good book, by the way, “Prophets Without Honour” by Richard Grunberger, I think. I’ll check that for you. So yes, it’s a very, very important point you’ve made, Karen. I cannot overemphasise it, the Romantic movement.
Also, let’s go back to the myths and legends of Germany, and France. When was Germany great? Think the content of Wagner’s operas, they are anti-reason, they’re also anti-moral, “brothers and sisters.” And they are “beyond good and evil” to quote Nietzsche. So it’s fascinating, look, how the Jews get tied up in all of this.
Yes, John, it was, and John, you wrote me an incredibly long and very interesting email and I replied. Unfortunately, I replied to Lauren who sent it to me. And I’m waiting for my grandson to come round so that I don’t have to redo it. But very interesting. Thank you, John.
Sharon’s asking about Fanny. I think it was typhoid, with Felix. I can’t remember. I don’t want to give you bad information.
Anna says, “Some well known individuals "converted back to Judaism.” That was Schoenberg, yes. But that was in 1933 when Hitler came to power, he went into a synagogue and reaffirmed his Jewishness.
Oh, this is from Steven. I love it. “No such thing as converting back, "that wonderful line from Hotel California, ”'You can check out, but you can never leave.’“ You see, that’s the point. What does the word Jew mean? These people who are converting think it’s a religious conversion. And many of them, it was pragmatic. I mean, Heine converted in the end. I mean, hopefully on Thursday, if not next Monday, I’m going to look, Heine and some of his friends actually set up a society, the kind of thing that Wendy’s done with the Lockdown University, to go back to learning about Jewish history. Because he realised it was all going, a few years later, he converted. Why? He said baptism is the passport to European civilization. He wanted a chair at University Dusseldorf. He didn’t get it. For many of them it wasn’t religious.
This is from Myra. "Mitz, my mother was a Berliner and spoke high German. "She hated Yiddish because it was a bastardization, "perspective is everything.”
That’s a lovely comment. Yes. A lot of you have reminded me of Genius and Anxiety. Oh, I do love you lot. You know, in fact, I’m going to give you the task. I’m sure there’s doctors online.
Q; What did Felix and , I suppose it’s got to be in Norman’s book. But what did Felix die of? When you said, “Went back to the ghetto,” did I mean literally?
A: Yes, Maurice, I’m afraid I did. I haven’t come to Naphtali Hirz Wessely yet, John, because you might have noticed, I am going to avoid the split between orthodoxy and reform. I am going to opt out and I’m going to ask someone else to give that lecture. I haven’t asked yet, so I won’t say who, but I think someone else should give that lecture.
Oh, this is from Monty . A lovely comment. “After Erich Maria Remarque moved to the USA, "he was asked if he missed Germany. ”‘Why should I miss Germany?’ “‘I’m not Jewish.’” Oh, that’s a fabulous comment, Monty. I didn’t know that. That’s wonderful. Of course, his books were burnt by the Nazis. Never forget, there were good, liberal Germans.
Q: “Is it true that the Enlightenment in Germany was what led "to many intellectual?”
A: Yeah. Yeah. They wanted Germany. And let’s face it, in the ghettos, the were pretty dark. I’m going to be talking about that next time when I look at the society that was set up by a group of, that included Heine.
Oh, this is lovely from Jonathan. Yes, I didn’t mention this. “In order to marry, Jews had to buy their dinnerware "from the porcelain factory owned by the royal family.”
“And that’s in the Amos Elon book.” says Maxine. Yes.
This is from Esther. “The memorial to the book burning "by the Humboldt University in Berlin "is by the amazing Israeli artists Micha Ullman.”
Thank you very much for letting us know, Esther. Yes, that is important. And once this is over, this lockdown, it’s such an incredibly interesting city to visit, Berlin. And I think it’s got the fastest growing Jewish community in Europe now.
“Fanny Mendelssohn,” this is from Jennifer, thank you, “died of a stroke. "Apparently, Felix grieved terribly "and died several months later from a series of strokes. "He wrote his ‘String Quartet No. 6’ "and called it ‘Requiem for Fanny.’” Thank you very much, Jennifer.
Q: “Did any of the converted Jews ever return to Judaism?”
A: Not the ones I’ve mentioned. Look, sometimes it’s pragmatic, sometimes it’s, I mean, I think with Herschel Marx it was pragmatic. I think with Heine it was pragmatic. Some of them did it because they fell in love with Catholicism and they fell in love with these young German intellectuals. I mean, look, Dorothea married a man 13 years younger than her.
Q: Judi, “What did of the Mendelssohn sister "married the French mathematician?”
A: I’ll have to check that. I don’t think so.
Q: “What is the address of Lockdown University website?”
A: The website isn’t up yet. We’re-
Sorry, Trudy. It’s taking much longer than our thoughts was going to take. Because I want to do it right. And it’s not something that you can do, check-check. If you want to do it proficiently-
And knowing Wendy, it will be superb. So it’ll be worth waiting for.
Q: “What was the moment when Moses became famous?”
A: Basically when he started publishing these incredible lectures, these incredible articles and books on the Enlightenment, he wrote a book called “Phaedon.” He became incredibly well-read. He was read, look, he was known as the Jewish Socrates. Look, he beat Kant to the prize at the Berlin Academy. It’s just that people don’t read him now, he is out of fashion.
Q: Oh, Carol Nime, she’s asking a question. “In today’s Israel, what is Judaism? "Can the Orthodox Jew go back to 300 years "and become modern?”
A: Oh, this is the problem with Jewish identity. What on earth does that word mean? If I was lecturing to you about Christianity, it would be much easier, funnily enough, ‘cause that is a religious belief system.
Q: Another question, “Is Islam a culture or is it a belief system?”
A: I think it’s more similar to Judaism in that way. There are so many debates we could have, Wendy.
This is from Joan Shapiro, “Rhine land ownership, "it makes me think of the scene in Woody Allen’s film "when he pulls out a clump of grass and says, 'Own land.’
"Clever, funny, and so true.” Michael is saying,
“A very interesting comment by Wendy, "South African Jews were not trying to fit into any group, "more just wanted to educate and develop themselves.”
Proud of the Judaism, actually.
Mm-hm.
Proud of who we were.
Yeah, I know, I think that’s something you want to bring up in the series later, don’t you?
Yeah. So not really about self-esteem. Self-esteem, risk taking, feeling part of a community.
It’s-
Yeah.
Psychologically very important questions and debates.
Yeah.
Q: - And this is from Lorna. “Even after conversion to another religion, "can you ever actually become a non-Jew?”
A: What if I tell you there were three popes who were born Jews, mediaeval popes. You know, I mean, there are so many byways of history.
Trudy, that would be a fabulous presentation.
Or if you want me-
Let’s make a note of that.
Maybe after the Yom To vim, we’d do a bit of mediaeval history. ‘Cause it’s fun.
Well, especially about leadership?
Yes, of course. Popes from the ghetto. That’s great fun actually.
Yeah. Look, and this is from Barbara. Again, she’s echoing your point, Wendy. “Dear Trudy, I’m pleased to say that in Johannesburg, "we, young Jews, were proud of our Judaism, "on the whole, most of us were Zionists. "Many of our schools had large proportions of Jewish pupils. "And we also lived in certain areas "which were predominantly populated by Jews.”
So that’s interesting. South Africa is a special case. Whereas in England, it’s interesting. If you look at Jewish philanthropists in England, And you know, I think Jews are the most philanthropic community in Britain. But what do they give their money to? Do they give their money evenly to Jewish and non-Jewish causes? It’s fascinating. Do they want to be in the House of Lords? What do they aspire to? Look, it goes back to that basic premise. If you have a child, a son, around this time. In Eastern Europe, if you had a brilliant son, he’d go to the Yeshiva. Now in Germany, if you had a brilliant son, where would he go? And also in Eastern Europe there were the numbers. Look, in Berlin, we’re talking under 3,000 people. And you did notice, I hope, that Frederick II kept the numbers down. You weren’t allowed, even if you were a wealthy merchant and you had four children, you couldn’t settle your children in Berlin, he wanted to keep the numbers at a certain level.
Yes, this is from John Norman. It’s a very important point, John. “Goethe visited the Frankfurt Ghetto "and was shocked by the poverty.” Yes. Yes, he was. Yes. This is from-
Ed is irritated with you, Trudy.
I know, why not write the book titles down? If I could type, I would. Don’t laugh at me. Somebody wrote and asked for a copy of my lecture. I don’t type. I’m a dinosaur.
Well, Trudy-
But what I’ll do, I will-
You should practise.
So I’m going to quote Woody Allen. I know the first line is quote and the second line, “It has .
All right, so Katie-
But what I would do.
Well-
Wendy, I reckon, what I would do,
Yeah.
My grandson is coming to visit tonight. I will type them and I will send them to Judy and to Lauren. How’s that?
No, you know what? You don’t need to type them. What you can do is, why don’t we just jot them down quickly and then we can share them. We’ll send them out.
Okay. Honestly, yeah. "The Pity of it All,” that’s the one you need to buy. “The Pity of it All” by Amos Elon. That’s the one.
Judi. Judi-
That was unnecessary. I love it. I love it.
Maybe Judi can put-
I’ve got it. I’ve got it. They could just be put on, we can go onto the next email when we send out Trudy’s reminder in the week, and-
Okay.
[Judi] It’ll be on the next email.
Oh, this is interesting. This is from Jackie Newman. “My daughter was in South Korea for two years. "She went to the Jewish services on the American base. "There was some South Koreans attending regularly. "They wanted to convert to Christianity "and felt they had to be conversant with Judaism first.” That is fascinating, Jackie.
Oh, and Eli Strauss points out, “In the Jewish Museum in Berlin, "there’s an entire section labelled 'baptised Jews.’”
Yes, Eli. Are you talking about, I presume you’re talking about the museum that Libeskind designed. I actually saw it empty. I think it was better empty because the design is so brilliant. I really think, if you haven’t had the opportunity to go to Berlin, it really is worth a visit once lockdown is over. Oh yes.
This is from Carol. “My father from Frankfurt never knew a word of Yiddish, "he said, ‘Only the Ostjuden spoke , they spoke,’ "and he further goes on to say, "My mother was Vietnamese and looked down on Yiddish "as a less cultured language. "Most Orthodox Jews who were cultured, "looked down on the Ostjuden, Eastern .” We’re a strange people.
Margaret, “Fanny M. died of a stroke, "Felix’s death is a mystery. Oh, and Margaret’s saying, likely to have been a subarachnoid haemorrhage. Wow. I love all your expertise.
This is from Josie. "My mother was a refugee from Berlin in Johannesburg. "She married into the family of Orthodox Lithuanian Jews. "She had to convert though, "so that could join the shul. "She learned Hebrew, her fifth language. "She said, ‘When I speak, no one listens to what I say.’ "They just criticise my English.” I love it. Yes.
This is from Ellie, again, “I know Berlin very well. "My kids live and work there "and it is indeed fascinating and growing. In fact, Germany is the one European country "of the least antisemitism.”
Yes, this is Richard Johnson. “‘Prophets Without Honour’, that is the book by Grunfeld.”
Yes. Jonathan Mattis, “Remarque’s second wife was Jewish.” Didn’t he have enough problems?
“How do we find…” The recordings of the past lectures will be on the website.
Yes, Michael. Moses Mendelssohn rewrote the Pentateuch in modern terms.
Q: Did he go against the law?
A: That’s the question. “Cardinal Lustiger of Paris.”
Yes. I think, Wendy, we’ve got another lecture at half past seven, haven’t we?
We do. And I think we should get in touch with Henri as well, Lustiger.
Yes, of course. Yes. That would be fabulous, Wendy.
Such a lovely man.
, everyone. Look, Wendy, with your permission, I think I’m going to have to go, I think I’ll be in Germany for at least another three sessions. I think we have to because there’s so much to talk about.
Well, we can be there for longer.
Yeah, exactly.
And you don’t need permission. I just feel the longer we take, I just like to do things more in depth because then one has a better understanding.
Yeah. Okay, so I’m threatening you all. I’m going to be in Germany for another two or three weeks at least, right up to the Yom To vim, because I think it’s such an important issue. And also what is so fascinating is how many Jews pushed German society forward. I mean, once we look, it’s the Jews working in the German language. There was no one to touch them. It’s fascinating.
Exactly. It’s fascinating.
Yeah.
All right, I promise. Okay, God bless. And Helen Fry’s on tonight, giving another insight into German Jews, which is an incredible story.
Thanks, Trud. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for joining us.
Good bless, everyone. Bye.
Thanks. Bye.
Bye.